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Riya Bhattacharjee

LeConte Elementary School fifth-graders Vanessa Echeveste, Yesenia Bermudez and Zaira Romero lead their classmates and the audience in a rendition of “What Can One Little Person Do?” during the school’s June 9 promotion ceremony.

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With changes in West Berkeley zoning rules on the Planning Commission’s slate, residents of the area say they want a seat at the stakeholders’ table.

Several residents of the city’s only area zoned for manufacturing and light industry appeared at the June 10 commission meeting to say they wanted their own representation in discussions that could lead to a new process for building on larger parcels.

Another 50-plus members of the Fifth & Channing Neighborhood Group signed a petition questioning some of the proposals floated for the permit process to ease development on larger parcels.

Two trends have emerged from speakers who have addressed the commission with alternative visions of the rezoning process, which aims to make it easier to shift and rearrange uses within existing developments and to allow stage development through a master use permit (MUP) process.

While James Bohar of the international real estate brokerage Cushman Wakefield argued that the city should not limit development to a fixed number of sites, Rick Auerbach and other activists from West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC) said that opening up all plots of three acres or more to the MUP process could decimate existing and future manufacturing businesses.

Auerbach said 25 or 30 three-acre parcels would consume 40 percent of the existing land zoned for manufacturing (M, MM and MULI).

The existing West Berkeley Plan only calls out six parcels, described by city staff as so-called “legacy sites.”

One concern that has worried neighbors is a proposal to allow parcels developed under the MUP process to house buildings of up to 90 feet in height, which members of the Fifth & Channing group described as “excessive” and “grossly out of proportion.”

Their other concerns included proposals to reduce the setbacks between new structures and existing residences, waivers of parking and a call to double the floor-to-area ratio of new structures, which would significantly increase building mass.

The City Council, which is behind the push for what was originally dubbed “West Berkeley Flexibility,” has also pushed the commission to “fast track” some aspects of zoning in advance of the longer-term project of defining the MUP and its application to West Berkeley.

Among the possibilities presented to commissioners were opening up manufacturing and industrial zones to child care facilities with a staff-issued administrative use permit (AUP), approval of incidental retail in MULI zones with an AUP, allowing for interchangeability of manufacturing, warehouse, whole and recycling uses of existing and newly constructed spaces and reducing parking requirements.

“We’re very concerned about the scale of what you’re projecting,” said 30-year West Berkeley resident Edward Moore. “You’re going to change the whole character of what people have built.”

Jim Morris, another Cushman Wakefield representative, said that while “I sense a lot of fear from many people,” the system would maintain “a broad level of discretion which the city can inflict on any developer.”

But WEBAIC activist John Curl, a woodworker, said “the process has taken a wrong-way turn when at least 25 parcels have already been identified” as possible MUP sites, “and more all the time. It would be a disaster for industry in West Berkeley.”

Commissioner Victoria Eisen said she was concerned that “we don’t always get the sense of what the stakeholder groups have said until they come here.” The stakeholders, to date primarily property- and business-owners, have been meeting with city planning staff.

Eisen said that while discussion had gone “far beyond those six sites, the one Berkeley plan I have heard the most support for is the West Berkeley Plan.

Commissioner Patti Dacey said that while the city could not limit development to specific sites, it could limit the total number of MUPs allowed, which would be one way to preserve existing manufacturing space and the city’s growing recycling industry.

Commissioners are scheduled to take up proposed fast track zoning language at the June 24 meeting and the staff and stakeholders are slated to meet again June 29 and July 2 to discuss both the fast tracked changes and recommendations for defining the MUP.

At Wednesday’s Berkeley Board of Education meeting, about 20 Berkeley High School students protested what they called campus racism.

The students, some of them members of the Black Students Union, told the board they were protesting racist incidents on campus, including epithets and attacks by a few white students, which had created a hostile environment in the weeks before the school’s June 12 graduation ceremony.

Wednesday’s protest came after some 300 students marched from Berkeley High School and staged a sit-in at the Berkeley Unified District Headquarters at Old City Hall June 5, demanding that the district administration organize meetings to address the problem and to recruit more minority teachers on campus to create diverse and culturally aware classrooms.

During last week’s anti-racism rally, the students handed out flyers which said that Berkeley High’s black teachers and students would not tolerate the “racist actions taking place” on campus. The flyers specifically mentioned incidents where some white students had created a Facebook album titled “Niggas,” portraying blacks in a “demeaning, derogatory way.” Another incident involved someone posting a digitally altered picture of a black Berkeley High teacher wearing chains and a “grill” on the social networking website a few days later.

“We understand that these actions are complicated by the fact that black people and other races use the N-word frequently and in confusingly, yet so-called ‘affectionate’ ways,” the flyer said. “We feel that the N-word should be put to rest by all races because it holds so much negative power. Many young people in our generation fail to realize its historical connotations.”

As finals approached, students walked Berkeley High’s hallways with sings on their chests which read “I am not a n-----.”

Berkeley High has 3,100 students, with black students accounting for about a third of the population

At the board meeting, Berkeley High seniors Assata Harris and Xihuanel Tutashinda read aloud a list of demands on behalf of the Black Students Union, which asked the district to make African-American or ethnic studies classes a graduation requirement, create a diverse student panel to participate in the hiring of more black teachers and train all educators to be more culturally sensitive.

Harris and Tutashinda stressed the importance of sponsoring workshops which would give students a platform to discuss issues on race, gender, religion and sexual orientation across all the different programs at Berkeley High. They also asked for “truth and reconciliation forums” where people who had committed hate crimes or acted disrespectfully toward students because of their race, gender, religion, disability and sexual orientation would be held accountable.

Instead of requesting punitative measures, the students said they wanted to see “restorative justice healing circles” which would give hate crime offenders and victims a chance to heal.

Addressing the board, Harris said she felt that “Berkeley High did not value students of color.

“We want teachers of color who will be allies in our classroom,” she said. “We want cultural awareness. All of our black and brown kids are at Berkeley Technology Academy [the district’s only continuation high school]—what’s up with that?”

The students also said they were concerned that one of the students involved in the racial attacks was going to make a speech at the high school’s graduation ceremony.

Pastor Michael McBride of Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action stood up to speak in support of the students during public comment, but yielded his time to Rev. Allen Williams, pastor of Berkeley’s St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church.

“We come out of deep concern,” said Rev. Williams, explaining that he had heard that some students had used hate speech on campus. He inquired about Berkeley Unified’s student code of conduct and asked the school board whether the student who had used derogatory language would be speaking at graduation.

Williams’ question prompted district Superintendent Bill Huyett to ask Berkeley High Principal Jim Slemp, who was present at the meeting to give a presentation on the School Governance Council, whether “there were students speaking at graduation who used hate language,” to which Slemp said no.

In an interview with the Daily Planet after the meeting, Harris said a video made by a group of junior girls at Berkeley High poking fun at black women had caused a lot of tension on campus about a year ago. The students later took the video down when confronted by some of their peers.

The situation flared up again three weeks ago, Harris said, when a group of white 12th-grade boys created an album on Facebook which showed them posing with guns and alcohol. They called it the “Niggas” album.

When other students, including Harris, asked them to delete the album because it was “promoting hate,” they refused, Harris said, instead changing the name to “Not the N-word.” Outraged students complained to On Campus Intervention officials, who told them that because this was taking place on the Internet, they couldn’t do much about it. The matter reached Slemp’s ears and he called a meeting to talk with parents and teachers.

Harris said one of the boys in the group threatened her with a note on campus which said “I am going to get you.” When she reported the incident to On Campus Intervention, the student was immediately suspended.

Tutashinda said that following the album incident, when some students discovered their teacher’s picture on Facebook digitally altered to reflect a “black stereotype,” they were angry and decided to hold a demonstration.

“Racism should not be tolerated,” Tutashinda said. “What started as a joke made everyone more aware of people’s attitudes toward racism and race. We know that the school board can’t make all our demands happen, so we are trying to get together as a group. We will go from class to class to get everyone involved—even our teachers.”

Berkeley Unified spokesperson Mark Coplan said the incidents reported by the students were part of a bigger picture.

“It’s not the case of one incident or situation,” Coplan said. ‘It’s a case of overt racism inherent not just at Berkeley High but in our community. It is like a pimple on the back of the whole situation.”

Coplan added that Assistant Superintendent Neil Smith had praised the students for their courage to stand up against the incidents, and that Huyett had decided to meet with the students and Slemp to talk about the situation.

“It’s a great start to a resolution,” he said,

Berkeley Board of Education Director John Selawsky said he was concerned that a few racist incidents were giving the impression of rampant campus racism.“But if it’s more than one or two students, then it may be something more serious,” he said, adding that the district was investigating the charges.

Board Vice President Karen Hemphill said it would be premature to comment on the investigation because it was still ongoing. “It could result in student suspension which is confidential and cannot be made public,” she said.

Hemphill acknowledged that both overt as well as subtle forms of racism were present on campus which could affect students in different ways and trigger various responses.

Hemphill praised the students on their efforts to open up a much-needed dialogue on race relations to foster mutual understanding and respect.

“That is part of closing the achievement gap in our schools,” she said. “Berkeley still has to address racial differences, just like the rest of the country. Just because we have an African-American president doesn’t mean we don’t have race issues.”

The state Supreme Court Wednesday rejected a challenge to Berkeley Unified School District’s student assignment plan, upholding a March appellate court decision and paving the way for other school districts to replicate it.

Sacramento-based non-profit Pacific Legal Foundation challenged Berkeley’s student integration plan in the Supreme Court on the grounds that it violated Prop. 209, which forbids the use of race in school admissions.

The foundation’s attorneys represented the American Civil Rights Foundation in challenging the school district’s Elementary Student Assignment Plan for elementary schools as well as the admissions policy for specialized academic programs at Berkeley High School. The attorneys charged that both policies “use race, impermissibly, to assign or admit students.”

The California Court of Appeal upheld an earlier Alameda County Superior Court ruling that the plan is fair and legal on March 17, and on Wednesday the state Supreme Court declined Pacific Legal Foundation’s request to review the decision.

The appellate court judges concluded that Berkeley Unified’s “policy was not discriminatory because it did not show partiality, prejudice, or preference to any student on the basis of that student's race.” The court further stated that the “California Constitution prohibits unequal treatment of particular persons and groups of persons but does not prohibit the collection and consideration of communitywide demographic factors.”

Jon Streeter, a partner at the San Francisco-based law firm Keker and Van Nest, said the ruling will now be published and confirmed as law statewide.

“I expected the Supreme Court to deny Pacific Legal Foundation’s request because the Court of Appeal’s decision is well reasoned,” said Streeter, who worked on the case pro-bono.

“The Court of Appeals has endorsed Berkeley Unified School District’s efforts to ensure diversity in its schools. I am proud that the school district and the board of directors had the leadership vision and commitment to fight the case all the way to the supreme court for the purpose of diversity.”

Streeter, who chairs Keker & VanNest's Pro-Bono Committee, said he took up Berkeley Unified’s case because he wanted to help the district.

“I am a citizen of Berkeley and committed to my community,” he said. “When I saw the filing of the case by PLF I felt that the values we stand for were under attack and I was happy to donate my time.”

Streeter’s pro bono cases have included civil rights cases such as Avila v. Berkeley Unified School District, a voluntary desegregation case in which he represented the school district and won.

Calling Berkeley’s assignment policy discriminatory, Pacific Legal Foundation’s Principal Attorney Sharon Browne said in a statement that she was disappointed with the Supreme Court’s decision

”Berkeley Unified is using race as a factor in assigning students to public schools, which violates Proposition 209,” Browne said. “The First District Court of Appeal said it was okay for the school district to use the race of the student's neighbor instead of the race of the individual student. No matter how it is labeled, the district is coding people by color and treating people—students—differently based on racially based criteria.”

Browne said that the “final word had not been uttered on this issue.”

“In school districts that fall outside of the First District Court of Appeal's jurisdiction, any school assignment policies of this kind would still be subject to legal challenge,” she said.

Berkeley Unified’s student assignments are based on a geographic area and do not include an individual student’s race, district officials said.

“We will let the ruling speak for itself,” said Francisco Martinez, the district’s director of human resources. “It shows that we meet the demands of Prop. 209 and are committed to creating diversity and integration in our schools.”

Berkeley Board of Education Director John Selawsky said there was a very high likelihood that the district’s plan would withstand any challenge in the future.

“Because the appeal was filed under Prop. 209—a state law—it cannot be appealed in federal court,” he said. “There’s no other recourse under the state of California. For Berkeley--that’s the end of the challenge. But we have to wait and see what happens with other districts because any new law can be challenged by anybody.”

Alameda County public health officials announced the county’s second swine flu death Thursday. A middle-aged man who had been hospitalized for pre-existing health conditions died two days after the first death was reported.

The county received confirmation of the second death June 10.

The county’s first death also involved a middle-aged man, who was also suffering from prior chronic illness.

Both men have local family and did not have any recent travel history to Mexico, Willis said.

The Alameda County Public Health Office did not release any other information about the patients, citing state Department of Health Guidelines.

“The families have indicated they want privacy and the state department has been very clear about protecting their privacy,” Willis said.

The World Health Organization raised the H1N1 alert from to Phase 6—pandemic level—Thursday, the first flu pandemic in 41 years.

The decision was based on how easily the new virus is spreading from person to person across the world.

At this point, WHO considers the “the overall severity of the influenza pandemic to be moderate,” according to its website, “explaining that this assessment is based on scientific evidence available to WHO, as well as input from its member states on the pandemic's impact on their health systems, and their social and economic functioning.”

As of June 11, WHO reports that nearly 30,000 confirmed cases have been reported in 74 countries, including 144 deaths. Alameda County health officials said that to date, the county has 49 confirmed and 10 probable H1N1 cases. Berkeley has five swine flu cases so far—four confirmed and one suspected—but that number may change at any moment depending on new lab results, according to Berkeley’s acting health officer Dr. Janet Berremen.

A statement from the Alameda County Public Health Department says that “phase 6 does not address the severity of illness, or suggest that the disease is more deadly; it does call for global implementation of strategies to reduce the spread of disease and H1N1's potential impact on society.”

The county is continuing to work with health care providers, laboratories, schools, day care facilities, employers, among others to educate the public about the virus.

Dr. Tomás Aragón , executive director of the Center for Infectious Diseases and Emergency Readiness at UC Berkeley, said that WHO’s announcement did not come as a surprise.

“We in public health already knew it was a pandemic because it has spread around the world,” he said. “It’s just an official’s declaration of something everybody already sees as obvious. It doesn’t change anything we are going to be doing in the U.S. It’s been here for a while. It really will affect those countries who haven’t seen an outbreak yet more.”

Aragón said that compared to the flu pandemic of 1918, public health officials were better equipped to fight the virus today.

“We can now test people and monitor the course the epidemic is going, and we have more treatment options and facilities to deal with outbreaks,” he said.

Dr. Arthur Reingold, who heads the university’s Division of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health, said that there was always concern about the possibility of influenza viruses exchanging genetic information with other viruses, “especially ones that may be resistant to the drugs available: “It remains to be seen, however, if that will happen here.”

Dr. Lee W. Riley, professor of epidemiology and infectious diseases at the School of Public Health, said that people should continue to take the measures recommended to prevent the flu from spreading, especially the frequent washing of hands.

“I would keep on top of what the local health departments are recommending, since they will have the best knowledge of what is happening in your immediate area,” he said.

Dr Margaret Chan, director-general of WHO, said in a speech Thursday morning that “no previous pandemic has been detected so early or watched so closely, in real-time, right at the very beginning.”

“The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic,” Chan said. “We are in the earliest days of the pandemic. The virus is spreading under a close and careful watch ... The world can now reap the benefits of investments, over the last five years, in pandemic preparedness.”

The virus, Chan said, preferentially infected younger people, with the majority of cases occurring in people under the age of 25. Most severe and fatal cases were reported in adults between the ages of 30 and 50, she said.

“This pattern is significantly different from that seen during epidemics of seasonal influenza, when most deaths occur in frail elderly people,” she said. “Many, though not all, severe cases have occurred in people with underlying chronic conditions. Based on limited, preliminary data, conditions most frequently seen include respiratory diseases, notably asthma, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, and obesity.”

Chan stressed that, at the same time, about one third to half of the severe and fatal infections were occurring in previously healthy young and middle-aged people.

Two young girls were injured when gunfire pierced the glass of the Oregon Street bedroom where they slept.

A day after two children were injured when the house in which they were sleeping came under a barrage of gunfire, it looked like everything was back to normal in their South Berkeley neighborhood.

There was no yellow crime scene tape. There were no curious onlookers, no armed police officers standing watch outside the single-story building. The only tell-tale signs of the Sunday morning shooting were the big glass windows riddled with bullet holes.

The neighbors didn’t want to talk, and drew their blinds when asked if they had seen anything.

An old man who was standing across from 1519 Oregon St., the house that was targeted, walked up and said, “Nobody will talk because they are scared.”

Berkeley police said they received a call at 4:56 a.m. Sunday reporting “possible gunshots in the 1500 block of Oregon.”

When police officers arrived at the scene, they discovered the house that had been struck “numerous times by bullets.”

Right after the shooting, Berkeley police received calls from staff at the Children’s Hospital emergency room saying they had just received two young patients who had been shot.

Berkeley police spokesperson Mary Kusmiss said that the two girls, aged 3 and 6, were being treated for “non-life threatening injuries.” Both had sustained gunshot wounds to their legs. Police are not releasing their names.

Kusmiss said that although authorities did not believe the shooting was random, they would not divulge any other information at this point because the investigation is still in its early stages.

Some South Berkeley residents, speaking to the Daily Planet on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said they were angry the city was not doing anything to stop the escalating crime in the area.

On June 2, Berkeley police cordoned off a couple of blocks between Ashby Avenue and Russell Street on Shattuck Avenue to search for a young man they suspected of shooting at a car in West Berkeley. Kusmiss said police could not confirm whether Sunday’s incident was connected to the West Berkeley shooting or a recent car chase that took the lives of two innocent bystanders last month.

A neighborhood resident—one of the callers who had alerted the Berkeley police to Sunday’s shooting—gave an account of the morning’s events.

“We were woken up by really loud gunfire and were convinced it was happening right under our window,” he said. “Afterwards, we couldn’t figure out what was up, because we heard no cars racing away or people yelling. We began to wonder if it had been some electrical box failing or something. But it was 10 very distinct shots. Living around here, you get very good at counting.”

The man said that he had seen drug dealing going on around the house quite a few times.

“It’s entirely predictable that something like this would happen,” he said. “We know it’s a problem property so why doesn’t the city do something about it? It’s lucky that nobody got killed. Next time it could be my kids.”

Jim Hynes, assistant to Berkeley City Manager Phil Kamlarz, said that the city did its best to be proactive about problem properties as a preventative measure.

“If we let problem properties fester, they can turn into bad situations where there are drugs,” he said. “That said, we have also had drug dealing activities at places which are not problem properties.”

Hynes said the Oregon Street building was first brought to the city’s attention as a blighted property by a community member.

However, because Berkeley’s Blight Ordinance exempts single-family owner-occupied buildings from being labeled a blight, nothing could be done about it.

The city later tagged the house as a problem property because of violations to multiple city codes, including environmental health and housing.

Hynes said the city was aware of only one person living there who had been unable to pay the mortgage but could not provide a name.

He said the property had been foreclosed by Coldwell Banker, who had served the homeowner with eviction papers on Feb. 13. Court documents filed at the Alameda County Superior Court show the property is currently occupied by Jorja Mosley. Property owner Deutsche Bank National Trust Company will seek to evict Mosley in a trial scheduled for Friday, June 12.

Mosley is being represented by the Oakland-based Eviction Defense Center.

The city, Hynes said, had fined the property owner $2,600 for broken windows, dry rot, defective electrical wiring, overgrown weeds and other violations. He said that some of the problems had been solved and that the city had changed the site from a problem property to one that was being monitored.

“We are waiting to see what happens in court,” Hynes said.

On Monday, broken bottles, cardboard and garbage lay all over the front porch of the house and the front gate stood open. A faded handwritten note stuck to the front door read: “If you did not make an appointment with Madam J, do not knock on the door or ring the bell under any circumstances.” A wooden swing creaked nearby, and a portable barbecue grill sat in front of it, surrounded by weeds and other overgrown vegetation.

Another neighbor, who also asked that her name not be used, said it was likely the suspects were targeting a local drug dealer who had grown up in the house.

“Things are getting more and more scary,” she said. “It’s a house that has had an enormous amount of crime associated with it. It’s a known drug house. The city has failed the community by looking the other way.”

However, Hynes said he did not “recall ongoing drug action” there. “I don’t categorize it as a drug house. It’s possible there is drug dealing, but we don’t have a long detailed history of drug dealing or arrests there.”

Between 2008 and 2009, the city identified approximately 23 “active” problem properties and placed 37 others under monitoring. One hundred and sixty-seven properties were closed down. Hynes said there were four drug houses in Berkeley—including 2023 Channing Way, 2326 Spalding and one house in the 1500 block of Alcatraz—which have either been closed down or are being monitored.

He said Berkeley’s municipal code labeled a building a drug house if they found shooting galleries—a place where illegal drugs can be obtained, prepared and taken by injection—homeless encampments and syringes.

Gary Ferguson Sr., a self-identified former drug addict who is now in charge of the alcohol and drug recovery center STEPS, said it was important for the Berkeley Police Department to develop a relationship with the south Berkeley community in order to deal with crime.

“Certain police in that area need to know people in that area so that they can build a relationship with them to divert crime even before it happens,” he said. “A lot of people who need help don’t know how to ask for it. Having an individual who is a paid person—a dedicated community liaison—around all the time, and not just every time there is a shooting will help people get resources they don’t even know about.”

Calls to Councilmember Max Anderson, whose district includes the Oregon Street block, were not returned by press time.

Berkeley’s 2009 quarterly crime report presented at the June 9 City Council meeting shows that in 2008, violent crime (homicide, rape and robbery) increased by 5 percent compared to 2007, and 23.6 percent compared to 2004. It plummeted 5.4 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

There were a total of 7,519 violent and property crimes in 2008. Property crime, which includes burglary, arson and auto theft, shows a decline over the years.

The report, prepared by the city manager’s office, said the city was prioritizing violent crime by carrying out investigations and arrests, with a special emphasis on drug enforcement and gun seizures. The Berkeley Police Department, the report said, had heightened patrol services and was coordinating with Oakland police in light of the recent violence in South and West Berkeley.

Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna said that the city had two neighborhood services liaisons—Hynes and Angela Gallegos-Castillo—who were available to handle neighborhood issues, including concerns about problem properties and crime.

“I do realize we don’t have as many people as we’ve had in the past, but that’s because we have cut back on services because of the budget situation,” Caronna said. “Berkeley police continue to do their investigations, and I’ll just let them do their work because they have done a superb job in the past.”

The Berkeley Police Department is asking for the community’s help with this investigation. Anyone who may have any information regarding this crime is urged to call the BPD Homicide Detail at 981-5741 (office) or 981-5900 (non-emergency dispatch line). Callers who wish to remain anonymous can call the Bay Area Crime Stoppers Tip Line (BACS) at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).

The ROC Neighborhood Group is scheduled to discuss the June 7 Oregon Street shooting at a public meeting from 7-8:45 p.m., Thursday, June 11, at the M.L.K. Jr. Community Center, 1730 Oregon St.

Alameda County reported its first swine flu death Tuesday, June 9, a middle-aged man who tested positive for the H1N1 virus and had pre-existing chronic health conditions.

He had been hospitalized for the flu, county health officials said.

Sherri Willis, a spokesperson for the Alameda County Public Health Depart-ment, said the county was not releasing any other information about the patient, except that he lived in Alameda County and had “local family members.”

The man had no recent travel history to Mexico.

“We are saddened to hear of this death,” Alameda County Public Health Depart-ment Director Dr. Tony Iton said in a statement. “Most H1N1 cases in Alameda County have been mild. This is a reminder to all our residents to take basic precautions.”

To date Alameda County has 48 confirmed and 10 probable H1N1 cases. There are no current school closures or event cancellations due to H1N1. Willis said the county was asking residents to take the same precautions as first advised when news of the swine flu broke in April.

“All schools will be happy when they close for the summer this week,” she said. “The dynamics of the flu have not changed. We are telling everyone to increase awareness of cold and flu-like symptoms and to stay at home if they have those symptoms. We are also asking people to wash their hands and cover their mouths when they cough.”

Willis said the county was continuing to survey the situation and investigate those suspected of having the H1N1, including people they had been in close contact with.

“Usually people who are testing positive for H1N1 are reporting vomiting and diarrhea in addition to flu and cold-like symptoms,” she said

Willis said the county health department had received confirmation of the man’s death Monday, June 8.

“He already had existing health conditions,” she said, but declined to elaborate on what they were. “We know that H1N1 was a contributing factor in his death. Whether or not it was the lead factor, only hospital staff can attest to that. Whether H1N1 will go on his death certificate, I don’t know.”

Berkeley has so far reported a total of five swine flu cases—four confirmed and one probable—according to Dr. Janet Berreman, the city’s public health director.

“We also having many pending laboratory tests, so the numbers can change at any time,” she said.

Berreman could not say whether any of the cases were children. There have been no deaths or hospitalizations in Berkeley from swine flu, she said.

“H1N1 is fairly widespread in the Bay Area, so I am assuming it has spread in Berkeley,” Dr. Berreman said. “Our testing targets people who are severely ill as well as those who have been hospitalized.”

Berreman said Berkeley, which is one of the three cities in California to have its own health department, was learning about swine flu cases from lab tests and hospitals.

Just like in the case of seasonal flu, Berreman said, people with chronic illnesses were more likely to die if they get infected with the H1N1 flu strain.

“That’s why we are recommending people get seasonal flu shots,” she said, adding that the situation in Berkeley did not arise to the level of alarm. “When there is a vaccine available for H1H1, we will ask people to get it.”

The city’s health department recently sent out a statement saying that most flu cases in Berkeley have been relatively mild.

The Berkeley Unified School District worked with the city to close down Malcolm X Elementary School for two days when the parent of two students at the school was suspected of having swine flu, but reopened it under federal guidelines. Berkeley Unified School District spokesperson Mark Coplan said no swine flu cases had been reported in the Berkeley public schools so far.

Coplan stressed the need for parents to pay attention to influenza-like illnesses in children, and not send them to school if they were sick.

City health officers said they were “concerned about the possible return of the virus in the fall, possibly causing more severe illness.”

As of June 4, California has 1,014 swine flu cases—796 confirmed, 218 probable—reported in 38 of 61 local health jurisdictions.

The death in Alameda County takes the total H1N1 death toll in California to four since the outbreak began two months ago. A child in Contra Costa County died recently after being infected by H1H1.

The flagging economy has already stopped—at least for the moment—one of the two tallest new buildings planned for downtown Berkeley.

The Berkeley Charles Hotel is no more, Mayor Tom Bates told his City Council colleagues Tuesday, June 2.

The hotel was to have been one of two 225-foot high-rise hotels permitted under both drafts of the Downtown Area Plan now before the City Council. The council has scheduled adoption of a final plan at their July 7 meeting.

The hotel began as a dream of UC Berkeley, which wanted an upscale hotel in the city center to house campus visitors and host conventions related to the university.

“I hope that we get a hotel, I do,” Mayor Tom Bates told his council colleagues June 2. “But what has happened is the Carpenter Company (sic) has pulled back.

“Right now there is no hotel prospect,” he said. “I guess the university is looking at going out, again, and getting somebody to start over.This is like a glint in somebody’s eye. It may come about. And it may not.”

But UC Berkeley says reports of the project’s death may be somewhat exaggerated.

“The project is not canceled,” Christine Shaff, spokesperson for the universities Facilities Services department, said Wednesday. “The university is still pursuing the project.”

And Carpenter & Company remains the school’s choice for the project’s developer, she said.

The hotel was one of two major construction projects slated for the north side of the block-long stretch of Center Street between Shattuck Avenue and Oxford Street.

The other project, the UC Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Fine Arts project, is still moving forward, said Jesse Arreguín, the councilmember who represents the downtown district.

Carpenter & Company, a Massachusetts-based developer, had been tapped by the university to develop the hotel project, which was to have added about 210 hotel rooms and 50 upscale condominium units along with conference, retail and restaurant space.

“It’s a bad time to build things right now,” said Arreguín, who said reports of the pullout had been circulating “for a month or two. I knew they were having trouble getting financing. They had been moving ahead, and then they put it on hold.”

“Obviously, the economy has changed since the initial proposal,” said city Economic Development Manager Michael Caplan. “The project has been moribund for a long time.”

The councilmember said that the Massachusetts hotelier had been a good fit for the city, and had been willing to implement many of the recommendations of the city’s Hotel Task Force, a committee of citizens and planning commissioners which spent months formulating goals for the university-backed project in 2004.

Arreguín said a second possible new high-rise of similar height had been projected for the rehabilitated Shattuck Hotel, “but I hear that’s been pulled back as well.”

The hotel industry nationally has been caught up in the same economic contraction as the rest of the economy, the trends quantifiable in both rising vacancy rates and a dramatic decrease in new construction.

The Claremont Resort and Spa on the Berkeley-Oakland border, owned by Morgan Stanley Real Estate, announced 77 layoffs in March, and the owners of another major luxury property in the southern part of the state have simply walked away from the building.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the Sunstone Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) had simply walked away from the W San Diego, unable to renegotiate a $65 million dollar mortgage on the 259-room upscale hostelry.

According to Smith Travel Research, national occupancy rates for the week of May 17-23 were down 11.1 percent from the year before, while revenues per available room were down 19.4 percent, with average daily room rates dropping to $93.

Caplan said Berkeley has been doing better than most East Bay communities, thanks in part to the steady demand generated by the university, both for events that draw parents and for conferences and other gatherings,

According to a June 8 article by Hotel Network News, Evangelos Simos, chief economist of e-forecasting.com, said chances of business expansion were rated as 4.7 percent in May, compared with a recession risk of 95.3 percent.

In April, Lodging Econometrics, a consulting firm specializing in the hotel trade, reported that projected construction starts for the next 12 months “have declined precipitously from the Q2 2008 peak, down 23 percent by projects and 29 percent by rooms. The slump is a result of the rise in cancellations and postponements, which is expected to continue.” The firm reported “a large backup of projects that lack the financing to start construction.”

“Lending is practically non-existent for hotels greater than 200 rooms,” the company reported.

Shaff agreed with the conclusions of the industry experts.

“Because of the economy, financing in the near term is problematic,” she said. But the campus still believes that a hotel and conference center would be a positive addition, and we will continue to work with the city in ways to make it possible.”

It’s been a long time coming. And if the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board gives the green signal Thursday, June 11, the Berkeley Animal Shelter will have a new home after a decade-long battle.

The shelter, which has been running out of an 8,000-square-foot, one-story building in West Berkeley since the late 1950s, plans to relocate to the site of the old Helmet Building at 1 Bolivar Drive, thanks to a $7.1 million bond measure approved by Berkeley voters in 2002.

The Berkeley City Council—which added another $1 million to the bond money—voted last summer to buy the property which was on the market for $1.9 million.

A proposal to scrap the cur-rent 11,311-square-foot, two-story building on that site has already been approved by the city, and the zoning board is scheduled to vote on whether to let the Public Works Department build a new one in its place.

The new animal shelter will be a two-story, 11,700-square-foot structure overlooking the I-80 freeway and the Berkeley bike-ped bridge. A paved area adjacent to the south of the site is owned by the City of Berkeley and is currently being developed into the East Touchdown Plaza by the Department of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront.

A report from city planning staff says that that in order to provide a continuous design element for the animal shelter and the proposed plaza, the city hired the same firm, Design Community and Environment, to create the landscape design for both projects.

A shelter specialist was brought in to design specific shelter components.

Berkeley Humane Commissioner Jill Posener, who has been instrumental in getting a new site for the animal shelter for the last 10 years, said she had mixed feelings about the site.

“I had very high standards and a vision for what I wanted to see,” said Posener, who led the campaign for the animal shelter bond. “My intention is to seek perfection, but I guess one has to learn to be pragmatic.”

One of Posener’s concerns is that the current design does not provide rear access to the building or turnaround space for animal control vehicles.

“That’s a big problem for an animal shelter,” she said. “Also the kennels are right up against the freeway. Will it have an impact on the animals? We’ll have to wait and find out.”

Primitivo Suarez-Wolfe, assistant architect for the city’s Public Works Department, said that rear access could not be provided because the lower University Avenue off ramp curves around the north end of the property.

Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, who replaced late Councilmember Dona Spring, a staunch advocate of the new shelter, said he shared Posener’s concern.

“The access is a big issue,” he said. “It will be very difficult for the vans to maneuver. We are exploring some ways of getting access from one of the underpasses.”

Posener said that although she felt that the bond money, along with the council’s $1 million, would cover construction costs for the new building, it was difficult to get a clear sense of what the actual expenses would be.

“Bids are not in from the contractor,” she said. “We don’t know what we are missing.”

Even if the bond money covers building costs, it will not be enough to buy medical equipment, furniture and other necessities for volunteers, Posener said.

In spite of the shortcomings, Posener said the Bolivar Drive building would be a big improvement over the current municipal shelter,

“It’s a marvelous location and will allow volunteers to continue to walk shelter dogs on unleashed walks in Aquatic Park,” she said. Local architects BurksToma collaborated with animal shelter consultants ARQ to design the new building which would be as “sustainable” as possible.

“It is expected to be a model animal shelter, utilizing ‘green’ methods to reduce the environmental impact of this facility,” Posener said.

Posener described the current shelter as unsafe and completely inadequate.

“It’s terrible, simply terrible,” she said. “It has poor ventilation and lighting. The dogs can see each other which triggers a lot of barking and fighting. There’s no quarantine or medical area or a place for volunteers to meet. No outdoor dog room—I could go on and on.”

Posener said that when the site floods, there were dog feces running all across the floor. The laundry room doubled up as the euthanasia room

“It’s an unsafe facility, but it’s got some nice qualities as well,” she said.

“Dogs can sit in their outdoor kennels and watch the world go by. However, the rabbits have to sit opposite to the dog kennel. Overall, the shelter staff has worked really hard to turn it into a much better place than what it was before.”

Calls to shelter director Kate O’Connor were not returned by press time.

Even before the Berkeley Animal Shelter, Posener said, there was the “dog pound,” an open lot where animals were all thrown in together.

An educational book dating back to 1906 sheds light on the shocking conditions of Berkeley’s pound, describing it as being “located on the water’s edge at the foot of University Avenue and so close to the water that at high tide the pen is underwater,” Posener said.

Here, the book said, dogs, horses and other animals were confined together in a large fenced pen and clubbed to death.

“There is a description in the book of local people recalling hearing the yelping of dogs dying in pain,” Posener said. “The animals were so hungry they had gnawed and chewed on every wood structure. The pound was described as a ‘disgrace to civilized society,’ Berkeley’s ‘dirty little secret.’”

When the Berkeley Animal Shelter was built at 2013 Second St. at the same location as the earlier pound in 1953, it was managed by one “reluctant department after another— public works, fire, and then police,” Posener said.

Recordkeeping, although finally in place in the late 1980s, was spotty. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that records were available for public scrutiny.

In 1996, Spring called for a new animal shelter, and two years later Posener and a group of local animal welfare activists set up Paws for Thought, demanding complete reform at the shelter.

The group met with then-mayor Shirley Dean, who formed a mayoral task force in 1999 to examine shelter conditions. A year later, the task force released a report which transformed the way the Berkeley Animal Shelter was run.

“The report called for profound policy changes at the shelter, including removing it from under the control of the Berkeley Police Department, the creation of a volunteer program, employment of a volunteer coordinator and city support for a local animal rescue group Home At Last,” said Posener, who at that time insisted that the city replace the dilapidated shelter on Second Street.

The same year, new California state law mandated that shelters had to keep animals for a longer time and provide them with proper medical care. Up until then, shelters could euthanize animals even if they had minor medical conditions.

“We improved the state law by saying that no animal would get killed if there’s a space problem,” Posener said. “We have done a lot in Berkeley.”

In 2001, a non-profit spay-neuter program was established which the city took over in 2002, and has been funding ever since.

More than 6,000 animals have been spayed and neutered under the program, Posener said. Euthanasia rates have also gone down drastically at the shelter, which euthanised 75 percent of all dogs and cats in 1988. That number decreased to 65 percent a decade later, and is at 15 percent today.

One of the task force’s recommendations was a new animal shelter, and the animal advocacy group pushed the City Council to agree and support a bond measure which would fund the idea.

The animal shelter bond was the only tax measure to pass in the East Bay in Nov. 2002, winning by just over the required two-thirds majority.

The Berkeley City Council moved several steps closer to a finished Downtown Area Plan late Tuesday night, approving on a 6-2-1 vote a proposal by Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmember Linda Maio to modify the Planning Commission’s version of the plan and bringing in elements from the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission (DAPAC) version. But rather than building a full council consensus on the final plan, a majority-minority council split appeared to be widening, and at least one councilmember—a visibly agitated Jesse Arreguín—pounded his palm on the podium and said that the method in which the plan deliberations were being handled might force him to vote against the Downtown Area Plan in the end.

The council is currently deliberating between the two versions of the plan—DAPAC’s and the Planning Commission’s—which set somewhat different visions and guidelines for the economic and environmental development of Berkeley’s downtown core. The council has scheduled a July 7 final vote on adoption of the plan.

Tuesday night’s deliberations were planned for the council to give direction to city staff members so that the staff can come back with a detailed, modified final draft version of the plan on July 7.

On Tuesday, Bates and Maio introduced a three-page proposal calling for the final Downtown Area Plan to use the Planning Commission version as its base, but, according to the proposal’s framework language, “incorporate stronger language into the Planning Commission version along the lines that DAPAC suggested on several critical topics.”

Among the “stronger [DAPAC] language” suggested by Bates and Maio were the inclusion of DAPAC’s “green building” standards requirements and the establishment of a portion of Center Street as a car-free, pedestrian-friendly plaza.

But in the area of downtown-building-height limits—one of the strongest areas of disagreement between the DAPAC and Planning Commission versions—it was difficult to tell which plan the Bates-Maio proposal was leaning towards. Bates and Maio proposed allowing three downtown buildings at least 180 feet high, two of them hotels that could go as high as 225 feet if they “deliver[ed] significant public benefits” as defined by a city-written scoring system. The Bates-Maio proposal said that this suggestion “replaces the two hotels at 225 feet as proposed by both the Planning Commission and DAPAC,” but made no other comparison between the two original plan versions.

Maio read the proposal to councilmembers without comment. She said she drew up the final version of the modified proposal in consultation with several councilmembers, including Arreguín, who represents the downtown area. Arreguín disputed that, saying that, while Maio had talked with him about some of the issues in the downtown plan, “not a lot of what I had suggested” had been incorporated into the Bates-Maio proposal, and he only got a final copy of it four hours before the council meeting began.

Maio declined to incorporate several of Arreguín’s suggestions into her motion to have staff move forward with the Bates-Maio proposals, including charging an open space fee, banning 120-foot buildings west of Milvia, and requiring setbacks for buildings as low as 65 feet, as DAPAC had recommended. A frustrated Arreguín said that “it seems all the things I want to be put in are going to be rejected, so why even bring them up?”

Arreguín also appeared frustrated by Mayor Bates’ ruling limiting his time to discuss the issue. At first, Bates said he would give Arreguín two minutes to raise his points, but when the councilmember protested that this was not enough, Bates agreed to allow him five minutes. When Arreguín continued to protest the time limit, Bates asked him “Do you want five minutes or not?” and then, appearing to grow testy himself, the mayor said finally, “I’ll give you five minutes. Go.”

Councilmember Max Anderson later told the council that “I’ve been a bit uncomfortable about the [deliberation] process [to modify the Downtown Area Plan]. I became even more uncomfortable when Councilmember Arreguín said he’d been shut out of the compromise process.”

Anderson abstained on the vote to move forward with the Bates-Maio proposals, while Arreguín and Councilmember Kriss Worthington voted against it. While Tuesday’s vote does not automatically mean final council passage of the proposals when they come back on July 7, the large majority for the proposals appeared to indicate that they will remain in the final package. It also means that the Planning Commission version, rather than the DAPAC version, will almost certainly be the foundation version from which council modifications are made.

Tuesday’s deliberations also included the first presentation to the council by members of the DAPAC majority that supported the final DAPAC Downtown Area Plan proposal.

Following the meeting, Anderson, Worthington, and Councilmember Laurie Capitelli—who seconded Maio’s proposal motion and was part of the deliberations to draw it up—engaged in a spirited discussion of the matter at the council dais, with Anderson overheard telling Capitelli that “I’m tired of having these things rushed through like this.” Meanwhile Arreguín, who usually stays after council meetings to chat with constituents, left the council chambers immediately without speaking.

In other action Tuesday night, the council postponed discussions over a proposed new city telecommunications ordinance to govern cellphone tower regulations and placement.

In what Mayor Tom Bates called “a sobering update,” City of Berkeley Budget Manager Tracy Vesely told the City Council Tuesday night that proposed cutbacks in state funds being discussed in Sacramento could cost Berkeley as much as $8.2 million in the upcoming fiscal year.

While City Manager Phil Kamlarz said it was still uncertain how California will handle an estimated $23 billion in budget cutbacks caused by the economic downturn, “whatever the state does, it’s not going to be good [for Berkeley].”

Vesely said cuts being considered by the state Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to close the state’s budget gap include cutbacks in funds for Proposition 1A property taxes and sales taxes (a possible $4.8 million loss to Berkeley), Proposition 42 transportation funding (estimated $800,000 loss), gas tax transportation funding (estimated $1.7 million loss), and public health and mental health programs (estimated $900,000

loss).

Vesely said that she will come back to the council in October with an update on the final state budget actions, with the council expected to vote on revisions to the city budget in January, if necessary.

While the details and full extent of the state cutbacks to Berkeley’s government will not be known until after the June 23 deadline for passage of Berkeley’s new budget, the city is already moving forward to remedy the shortfall. On Tuesday, the council gave Kamlarz authority to draw up legislation for the city manager’s proposals to raise new revenues, including a proposed $5 parking citation increase, a 25-cent per hour parking meter rate increase, the addition of 641 new parking meters, and a proposed 15 percent increase in residential preferred parking permit fees. The council is expected to vote on those proposals as part of its June 23 budget vote.

The fee-increase proposal passed on an 8-0-1 vote, with only Councilmember Gordon Wozniak abstaining, saying that he felt the parking meter increase would be “counter-productive” and worried that the increase would “scare customers away from our commercial districts.”

The proposed parking fine increases would come on top of a $5 across-the-board increase approved by the council in March in response to a previous state fund take-away measure.

Councilmember Linda Maio, who made the motion to move forward with the fee increases, called the action a “distasteful thing” and said that “I think nobody on the council wants to initiate these increases.”

And Bates said that it is “terrible to be raising revenue in this way, but the legislature and the people have closed the avenues for local government to manage themselves. Prop. 13 has done so much damage to this state. We have the lowest industrial property assessed evaluation in the nation in California. If we had the right assessed evaluation we’d be able to fully fund our schools, we’d be able to fund a lot of things. The two-thirds requirement in Prop. 218 makes it almost impossible to raise tax rates. So in order to raise revenue, you’ve got to be as creative as possible, and it ends up being things like parking tickets and parking meters.” Bates said that the city had “no choice” but to go through with the increases, “even though it’s odious.”

UC Berkeley has taken the first step toward demolition of one of the city center’s biggest buildings, the 120,000-square-foot, eight-story former home of the state Department of Health Services.

The initial move will be the selection of an expert to ensure the proper handling of any radioactive materials remaining at the site from research conducted at the site between 1980 and 2005, according to the request for qualifications (RFQ) issued by the university’s Capital Projects division.

The structure, situated across Oxford Street from the main campus, occupies the block bounded by Oxford, Hearst and Shattuck avenues and Berkeley Way.

Built a half-century ago, the structure was vacated by the DHS in 2005, and the university is planning a major high-rise project on the site, the largest single element of the 850,000 square feet of new construction covered by its Long Range Development Plan 2020.

The university’s off-campus expansion plans into the heart of the downtown prompted a lawsuit which will produce a new Downtown Area Plan, which the City Council is slated to adopt next month.

The council-appointed Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) devoted several discussions during its two-year run to consideration of the university plans for the site.

During a March 7, 2007, DAPAC meeting, UCB planner Kerry O’Banion told the committee the university’s plans for the site call for a new “Community Health Campus,” shared by the schools of public health and optometry and the departments of neuroscience and psychology.

“All four have outreach programs and subjects coming in for assistance and diagnosis. The optometry clinic is very heavily used, and there is also a lot of outreach. They are all good, likely candidates to be off the main campus,” O’Banion told DAPAC.

The university’s slogan for the project “From Publication to Public Action,” defines the range of services planned for the new facility, ranging from research (publication) to action (treatment and public health measures).

“The campus plan has always been to demolish the building,” Christine Schaff, communications representative of the university’s Facilities Services department, said Wednesday.

“This is the first initial step,” she said, referring to the RFQ seeking “a qualified radiological contractor to develop and implement a plan that will demonstrate compliance” with state cleanup regulations.

Schaff said no timeline has been set for demolition because nothing can be certain until the radiological work has been completed.

No plans for the new building have been developed, though university officials told DAPAC they may opt for a high-rise at one corner of the structure facing the campus.

The deadline for applications for radiological contractors in June 26.

Chevron’s environmental study of a proposed expansion of their Richmond refinery received a fatal blow Friday at the hands of a Martinez judge.

Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga struck down the environmental impact report (EIR), declaring that the document’s “project description is unclear and inconsistent as to whether (the) project will enable Chevron to process a heavier crude slate than it is currently processing.”

The court also struck down a decision by the city to allow Chevron to wait a year after the EIR was completed to prepare a plan to mitigate the refinery’s globe-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Judge Zuniga ruled that Chevron had failed to meet a fundamental requirement of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). “An accurate, stable and finite project description is sine qua non of an informative and legally sufficient EIR,” she wrote.

Crucially, the judge ruled, the EIR “is unclear and inconsistent as to whether the project will or will not enable Chevron to process a heavier crude slate than it is currently processing.”

Heavier oils can produce larger emissions of greenhouse gases than the lighter “sweet” crudes, and the oil company did acknowledge the refinery might be processing oils with a higher sulfur content.

The city was at fault, Judge Zuniga ruled, by failing to state how the refinery would meet the city’s goal of requiring no net increase in greenhouse gas emissions and “by simply requiring Chevron to prepare a mitigation plan and submit it to city staff up to a year after approval of the conditional use permit” allowing construction to begin.

The city also erred in allowing Chevron to “piece-meal” its project, the judge declared. That term refers to a process in which developers attempt to minimize the impacts of a large project by seeking environmental approval in stages, rather than as a whole.

The piece-mealing fault found in the Chevron EIR was its failure to include a hydrogen pipeline planned as part of a hydrogen generation facility planned as part of the expansion.

Will Rostov, an Oakland attorney for Earthjustice, one of the four plaintiff organizations in the lawsuit, said that as a result of Judge Zuniga’s decision—and absent a reversal by an appellate court—Chevron and the city will be forced to redraft the EIR in accordance with the ruling.

“Chevron is disappointed with the court decision regarding the adequacy of the environmental review conducted by the City of Richmond related to the Energy and Hydrogen Renewal Project,” said corporate spokesperson Brent Tippen.

“Chevron believes that the Energy and Hydrogen Renewal Project was properly permitted and that the benefits of the project are identified in the thorough environmental review conducted by the City of Richmond staff and the city’s environmental consultants,” he said. “We will be reviewing the specifics of the court’s decision and will then be determining a course of action in cooperation with the City of Richmond.”

Other plaintiffs included Citizens for a Better Environment (CBE), the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) and the West County Toxics Coalition.

“This is a great victory for environmental justice,” said Dr. Henry Clark of the West County Toxics Coalition. “It proves that not all judges are in the pockets of Chevron and other corporations.”

Jessica Tovar of CBE said her organization had filed suit because “the people were demanding the truth from Chevron and the city. We’ve been going through this process for three years now.”

One of CBE’s major concerns was the hydrogen pipeline, which would carry the highly flammable gas to the ConocoPhillips refinery in Rodeo and Shell’s Martinez refinery, where, she said, it could be used to help those installations refine their own heavy crude oils.

Tovar said the proposed expansion was “designed to retool the refinery so it could process the heavier crude, and several scientists submitted data supporting our claim,” including one hired by state Attorney General Jerry Brown.

Torm Nompraseurt of APEN said his organization was concerned “that the city had conducted a process that was not very protective of the population.” Praising the judge’s decision, he said, “I think it’s time for Chevron to find a way to help make a greener and cleaner community.”

Nompraseurt also said that despite inconsistent reports to the community, Chevron had told its shareholders that the company did plan to refine heavy crude after the improvements.

Rostov said the next step in the legal process is preparation of a final order, which should occur within the next week or so.

One major question remaining is whether work on the project already under way will have to cease while the new EIR is prepared, or even whether work already completed will have to be removed.

Another CEQA suit against the refinery is also underway, this one involving a challenge to the state’s renewal in January of a 30-year lease for the refinery’s long pier.

That action was filed in March by Oakland attorney Stephan Volker on behalf of the Trails for Richmond Action Committee and Citizens for East Shore Parks.

Chevron is Richmond’s largest employer, and Richmond voters indicated last November that they felt the city should be contributing more to the community when they passed Measure T, a new business license fee structure which mandates that the refinery pay on the basis of the value of crude oil processed.

The company financed a campaign opposing the measure, but the measure passed and two members of the three-person progressive slate who backed it were elected to the City Council, replacing two Chevron supporters.

The state has fined UC Berkeley and an international agropharmaceutical corporation a total of $510,000 for illegally disposing of toxic waste in Richmond, prompting outrage from Sherry Padgett, the woman who has spearheaded the battle to clean up the sites, because the total penalties for illegal disposal of more than 3,000 truckloads of soils contaminated with deadly organic chemicals and poisonous metals work out to less than $170 a load.

According to the settlement agreement signed by officials of the university, Zeneca Inc. and the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), Zeneca will pay a total of $225,000 while the university will pay $285,000.

The funds will be evenly divided between the DTSC and Richmond BUILD, a city-sponsored program which trains young workers to install solar energy systems.

The fines stem from the illegal disposal of contaminated earth—most of it from the university’s Richmond Field Station—at the adjacent site where a former Zeneca chemical plant complex had existed for a century.

Richmond BUILD provides construction job training for high school graduates and GED recipients, with a focus on installation of solar energy systems.

“It’s a wonderful program,” said Padgett, who has spearheaded the drive to clean up the university’s Richmond Field Station and the adjacent Zeneca site where a complex of chemical plants operated for a century.

“But it’s an outrageous settlement,” she said. “Who decided on $510,000 as an adequate settlement for an illegal toxic waste dump on the San Francisco Bay shoreline?”

Padgett, the late Ethel Dotson, Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and other activists led the successful battle to force the state to hand oversight of the cleanups to the DTSC.

The illegal dumping was conducted during the period when the site was overseen by the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, an agency without any staff expertise on hazardous chemicals and metals.

But state Sen. Loni Hanock, who had led the legislative fight to replace the water board with the DTSC, praised the settlement.

“We’ve come a long way since the Contra Costa County Division of Public Health called me to say that an unsafe cleanup was being conducted by the wrong state agency,” Hancock said

“After public hearings, discussion and enforcement by the Department of the Toxic Substances Control, I am pleased that this settlement will provide money to an outstanding program that is giving the youth of Richmond job skills that prepare them for careers in the green economy,” she said. “It is important that resources go back to the impacted community.

“There is still much work to do to ensure that these two sites are cleaned up to the required standards,” she added. “I will continue to work closely with the community, state and local agencies and the property owners to make sure that all the toxic issues are addressed.”

According to the notices of violation issued by the DTSC in 2007, violations committed by the university and the Swiss corporation included:

• Treatment of hazardous waste without a permit.

• Disposal of hazardous waste at an unauthorized point.

• Shipment of hazardous waste to an unpermitted facility.

• Storage of hazardous waste without a permit or authorization.

• Transfer of custody of hazardous waste to an unauthorized trucking firm.

“The payment to Richmond BUILD fulfills one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s environmental goals of investing enforcement settlements in the communities where the alleged violations occurred,” he said.

But at the same time as funds are flowing to the building programs, monies supporting the DTSC Community Advisory Group have been cut off by Cherokee Simeon Ventures, the would-be developers of the former Zeneca site, where 350,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil remain under a concrete cap.

With hired scientific consultants, a transcriptionist and a program facilitator, members of the CAG had been able to challenge the developer-paid cleanup consultants, prompting the state to order additional testing which had uncovered still more contamination and extended the estimated cleanup time and effort.

“The DTSC had said they would look out for our best interests, and this does not represent the community’s best interests,” Padgett said.

“Every scientist who has examined this site has said it is one of the most complex sites they have ever seen, and it still hasn’t been properly characterized. We still don’t know everything that’s beneath the surface. And there’s still no cleanup plan,” she said.

Padgett said she was also astounded that the state had only released two 2008 investigation reports on the violations at the same time as the settlement. “We have been asking for these for almost two years, and we’re only seeing them now that the settlement has already been signed. It’s outrageous.”

Padgett said the CAG, which has repeatedly and futilely asked the DTSC about the violations, had been given no notice that settlement negotiations were under way.

One long-time veteran of the toxic regulatory front expressed surprise that the settlement hadn’t mandated removal of the toxic material, a condition usually imposed in such settlement agreements.

For this newspaper’s initial story on the violations covered by the settlement, see the July 3, 2007, issue. A story on the hearing that lead to the change of oversight is in the Nov. 9, 2004, issue. Padgett’s own story is also in the Nov. 9, 2004, issue.

The Daily Planet won two awards in the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club’s 2008 annual Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards dinner, held June 6 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Foster City.

Justin DeFreitas won another first place for editorial cartooning for all categories (daily papers, weeklies and magazines) and third place in the “Entertainment Review” category for non-daily newspapers for his review of Shine a Light, Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stones concert film.

Daily Planet freelancer John Geluardi won several awards for his work for SF Weekly, taking first place in three categories: “Feature Story of Light Nature,” “Feature Story of Serious Nature,” and “Analysis.”

Bay Area print journalists, photographers, radio and television personnel and public relations professionals were presented with 165 awards of excellence for their work in 2008.

The awards span the 11 counties of the Greater Bay Area. Awards were presented in in 67 categories. Entries were judged by the Bakersfield Press Club, Florida Press Club, Milwaukee Press Club, the Press Club of New Orleans, and the Press Club of Southeast Texas and the San Diego Press Club.

Though the commission didn’t feel that the structure itself was worthy of notice, the building’s cultural significance rendered it worthy of landmark status.

Chiura Obata immigrated to the United States from Japan in 1903 and eventually moved to Berkeley. From 1939 to 1941—the peak of his career—he worked at the 1907 Spanish Revival Style studio on Telegraph but was forced to abandon it when he and thousands of other Japanese-Americans were compelled to go into internment camps in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Although city planning staff warned the commission that the building itself did not appear to be “a structure of high integrity,” the majority of the commissioners supported the landmarking on the basis that the building evokes poignant memories of the time Obata spent there with his wife and children, serving as a reminder for succeeding generations about the Obatas’ invaluable contribution to Berkeley’s Japanese-American heritage.

“Maybe architecturally it’s not the most interesting building in Berkeley, but the way it is connected to the Obatas is very important,” said commissioner Bob Johnson, who lived in Japan for 13 years.

Commissioner Austene Hall remarked that landmarking the studio would keep the Obatas’ “humble story alive.”

“As most of us in California know, the need for uncovering Japanese-American history—the reason it is hidden in our communities—is that the U.S. government made a heinous error in the anxious time at the onset of World War II,” said social historian Donna Graves, who nominated the Obata Studio for landmarking with help from local preservationists Anny Su, John English and Steven Finacom. “Federal policy dictated that people of Japanese descent, whether they were American citizens or not, were forced to leave their communities, homes and businesses in the spring of 1942 and incarcerated in remote concentration camps behind barbed wire and under armed guard. This act, which was not perpetrated on people of German or Italian descent, irreparably harmed communities that Japanese-Americans had built in cities like Berkeley and across California. This is a story we Americans must remember, and it is part of what inspired the landmark application.”

Graves heads Preserving California’s Japantowns, a statewide survey of pre-World War II Japanese-American historic re-sources. Funded by the California State Libraries, the project has identified hundreds of locations in nearly 50 cities from San Diego to Marysville, sites once occupied by Nikkei, first generation Japanese-Americans.

The Obata Studio is one of more than 60 Berkeley sites on the list that provide links to the city’s Japanese-American community, which grew to 1,300 people in 1942.

The building’s association with Berkeley’s Japanese-American community started much earlier. Graves’ landmark application states that when the University of California moved from Oakland to Berkeley in 1873, it spurred development south of the campus, including commercial and mixed-use buildings near Telegraph and Dwight Way.

The Berkeley Daily Gazette wrote in 1901 that “the heretofore quiet and unassuming neighborhood near Dwight Way and Telegraph has evolved into a busy and disquieting scene of commercial activity. The click of the hammer and the hum of the saw has given the old resident a dream of better days, and he fancies that the business center will be transferred from Berkeley Station to Dwight Way and Telegraph.”

The building that would later house the Obata Studio was constructed in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which sparked a boom in Berkeley’s population. Originally built as a two-story structure for the real estate firm W.G. Needham, the building was also used as a Japanese barber shop, bathhouse and grocery store.

Obata moved his family to Berkeley in 1930, where he taught art at the university from 1932 to 1942 and from 1945 to 1954, “interrupted only by forced relocation during World War II,” according to Graves.

In 1938, Time magazine called Obata “one of the most accomplished artists in the West.” Known for defining the nihonga style of painting—a technique that blends Japanese traditional ink painting with Western methods—Obata influenced a generation of artists who were part of the California Watercolor Movement in the 1920s and ’30s.

During their two years at the Telegraph Avenue studio, which was about three blocks from their home at 2609 Ellsworth St., the Obatas also organized art exhibitions and classes and sold imported Japanese art. Obata’s wife, Haruko, taught ikebana, traditional Japanese flower arrangement. His son, unable to find work at the time despite holding a master’s degree in art and design from UC Berkeley, managed the family business.

“The boldness of the sign that Mr. Obata put up is remarkable, especially during that time,” said Landmarks Commission Chair Steve Winkle, referring to the name “Obata Studio,” which adorned the storefront during a period of racial prejudice toward Japanese-Americans.

Obata’s daughter, Yuri Kodani, 82, told the Daily Planet in an earlier interview that protesters fired shots through the window of the studio and trashed its steps in the darkness of night in the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 forced the Obatas, and thousands of other Japanese-Americans, to abandon their homes and relocate to internment camps. The Obatas sold their belongings and evacuated to Tanforan, a camp on the San Francisco Peninsula, and later Topaz, a Utah camp where Obata continued to paint.

With the help of Obata’s students and Robert Gordon Sproul, the family was able to retrieve his paintings when they returned to Berkeley in 1945.

In 1954, Obata became an American citizen, a status previously denied to all Japanese immigrants.

“The poignancy, the tragedy, the history of the Obata story—there are so many reasons to designate this as a historic structure,” said Dan Murphy, who has lived in one of the eight second-floor apartments of the Obata Studio since 1986.

Patrick Hayashi, former director of UC Berkeley’s Asian American Studies Department, recounted how, as a child growing up in the internment camps of Topaz, he had heard stories about the “Death Man”—Hatsuki Wakasa—who was shot to death by military police when his feet got trapped in barbed wire while walking his dog.

“Fifty years later I went to see an exhibit of art from the camps, and there he was, Mr. Wakasa—shot while he was being watched by his dog in a painting by Chiura Obata,” Hayashi said. “I started to cry. At that moment I experienced all the sorrow and the rage the Japanese-American community experienced. Obata used art to bring all kinds of people from all kinds of communities together. His studio will remain as a reminder of that, perhaps now even more than before.”

The Obata studio was later occupied by several artists and authors, including photographer Grant Oliver. It later housed Half Price Books and the Blue Nile Ethiopian restaurant.

It was scheduled to open as the Muse Art House and Café last year but, is currently sitting empty because owner Ali Aslami stopped renovation efforts midway.

Aslami, who otherwise agrees with the historical importance of the building, told the commission that after he started the remodeling, “many deficiencies caused by years of neglect” began to surface.

“When he opened up the wall, a nightmare befell him,” Aslami’s lawyer Rina Rickles said, explaining that in order for Aslami to get a bank loan to cover the extensive repairs to the roof, walls and foundation, he would have to expand the building.

The new design would add two more floors and reconfigure the existing apartments to create nine units, but Rickles said parts of the landmarking would limit the work Aslami would have to do to make the place habitable. She said her client was considering filing an appeal.

The alteration permit is scheduled to come before the landmarks commission at a future date.

Outgoing Berkeley Police Chief Douglas Hambleton told the City Council Tuesday night that the number of violent crimes in Berkeley had a small drop in the first quarter of 2009 and serious property crimes an even larger drop, something the chief called “a hopeful sign.”

Violent crimes (including homicides, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults) are down 5.4 percent this quarter as compared to the first quarter of 2008, while serious property crimes (burglary, theft, auto theft and arson) are down 14.5 percent.

The violent crime decrease in the first quarter is a change from 2008, when year-long totals were up 5.1 percent from 2007.

Hambleton said one of the major sources of Berkeley’s violent crime continues to be the Bay Area’s narcotics-dealing residents. “Often the gangs who are out engaging in more violent behavior are also tied to drug trafficking,” he said. The chief added that drug trafficking “was not the sum total of their lives. It’s not the sum total of their motivations. But while they are involved in that criminal enterprise, at the same time they may have a dispute that is totally unrelated to their narcotics trafficking, but because they are such violent people that’s the way they go about resolving their disputes, so they end up going out shooting somebody.”

The chief also said that the ongoing disputes between West Berkeley, South Berkeley, and North Oakland continue to be one of the sources of violent conflicts in the city. Hambleton said that Berkeley police have been meeting with North Oakland residents and with Oakland police officials to coordinate crime prevention efforts between the two cities.

While praising the work of city police, several councilmembers suggested further ways to lower the city’s violent crime rate.

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak suggested that the city might set up a citizen violence taskforce to explore the causes of the city’s violence and to make recommendations, while Councilmember Darryl Moore suggested that Berkeley create a police gang taskforce similar to the one currently operating in Oakland. Noting that approximately one-half of the persons arrested in Berkeley live outside the city, Councilmember Max Anderson said that there was “no way we can put up checkpoints and gun towers to keep people out of our city,” but suggested instead that the city come up with “a good plan for getting guns off the street. A common thread in many of these violent crimes is the use of firearms.”

Tuesday’s report was an information session only, and none of these suggestions was formally presented to the council for action.

Hambleton, who has served as Berkeley police chief since 2005, is retiring in mid-summer. The city is currently searching for a replacement.

The East Bay Municipal Utility District on Tuesday, June 9, adopted a two-year budget amidst financial constraints which will raise rates by 7.5 percent for each of the next two years.

The increase will go into effect July 1.

EBMUD provides drinking water for 1.3 million customers in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

The average residential water bill for all East Bay residents, including Berkeley, will increase by $2.88 to $35.95 per month for the financial year 2010, and by $2.71 to $38.66 per month for financial year 2011.

Wastewater rates will increase by 5 percent in 2010 and 2011, according to the new budget. The average single family residential wastewater charge will be hiked by 62 cents per month in 2010 and 72 cents per month in 2011.

A statement from EBMUD said the agency had adjusted the overall 7.5 percent rate increase for every customer in order to ensure that all groups were paying their share of total costs.

The results of a required cost service study in 2009 by EBMUD show that single-family residential customers were not paying their entire percentage of costs and that other groups were paying more than their share.

In 2010, rates for single-family residential customers will increase by 8.7 percent, and those for commercial and industrial customers by 5 percent.

EBMUD customers are currently paying drought rates because of a water supply shortage declared almost a year ago. However, adequate rainfall and snow last winter, along with conservation, made the EBMUD board declare an end to the drought emergency, starting July 1.

EBMUD officials hope that with the end of drought rates and adoption of the new rates starting next month, most customers will not see a significant change in their water bill.

It is estimated that the average single-family residential customer will pay about 2 percent more this year compared to the drought rates. Customers who paid drought surcharges last year, agency officials said, may see their bill go down.

Revenues for the water agency took a $30 million hit from the housing slump—fewer connection fees for new homes—and reduced water use. Making the situation worse, EBMUD said, are additional expenses for debt service for capital projects and increased costs for chemicals, self-insurance, employee salaries and health care among others.

“This has been the most difficult budgeting process in years,” EBMUD Board President Doug Linney said in a statement. “To keep the rate increase as low as possible, we instituted a hiring freeze, delayed numerous capital projects, restricted travel and conferences, and deferred scheduled replacements of vehicles and equipment. However, EBMUD cannot cut back service to the point where it might impede our ability to provide our customers with the high-quality water and reliable service they expect from EBMUD.”

A pair of assaults kept Berkeley Police hopping in the hours after a massive manhunt in South Berkeley Tuesday.

Police who had fanned out over the neighborhoods near the intersection of Shattuck and Ashby avenues in search of a gunman who had led officers on a chase after a drive-by shooting found plenty more to keep them busy afterwards.

One call alerted them to a man who was seeking treatment at Summit Alta Bates Medical Center for injuries sustained in a beating 24 hours earlier during a bizarre electric broom beating at the intersection of Telegraph Avenue and Carelton Street.

According to Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Andrew J. Frankel, the 42-year-old homeless man—who listed Peoples Park as his residence—said he had been walking across Carleton when he was bumped by a man toting a green electric broom.

After a verbal altercation erupted, the man used the broom to beat the homeless man.

The assailant remains at large, while the victim was treated for his wounds, albeit after a long delay.

Police learned of the second attack after a bleeding man found his way to a house near the border of Live Oak Park in North Berkeley and begged for help from a good Samaritan.

Police got the call at 9:34 p.m. and quickly arrived on the scene, where they found the 23-year-old victim bleeding from three stab wound in his lower back.

The injured man told officers he’d been drinking with a friend outside the Berkeley Art Center in the park when an argument broke out, during which his erstwhile friend, 28-year-old Jeremy Hill, started beating him with his fist.

“He said that he was afraid he’d be killed, so he pulled a knife and stabbed the suspect in the ear,” said Officer Frankel.

But Hill ended up with the knife, and used it against his companion.

Both men were taken to Highland Hospital for treatment of their injuries. Hill had sustained cuts to his left ear, left cheek and left arm. After treatment, he was taken into custody and booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.

Berkeley firefighters got a not-so-festive reminder of an approaching holiday when a 911 call summoned them to a grass fire near the intersection of University Avenue and West Frontage Road not far from I-80.

They arrived to find flames burning over a half-acre of dry grass near the Sea Breeze Market & Deli at the edge of Eastshore State Park, said Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong.

The flames were soon extinguished and, as the smoke cleared, firefighters found the cause: the remains of Roman candles and bottle rockets left by premature Fourth of July celebrants.

“Even ‘safe and sane’ fireworks are illegal in Berkeley,” said the deputy chief. “And if you really want to get burned, large fireworks can be prosecuted as felonies.”

Perhaps ironically, the site of Saturday’s fire would have been a good spot to watch some really spectacular aerial explosions, when the city holds it annual holiday fireworks display in the Berkeley Marina, starting at 9 p.m.

“Be sure to come before 7 p.m. if you want to find a place,” said Deputy Chief Dong.

Debris burn

An emergency call brought Berkeley’s bravest to the 2500 block of Buena Vista Avenue just after 9 p.m. Friday, June 4, when they found a pile of brush and branch debris burning between two houses.

Quick action prevented any damage to either of the two structures but prompted the deputy fire chief to remind Berkeley Hills residents that the city’s Fire Department and Parks and Recreation Department sponsor a joint program for residents left with piles of burnable plant matter.

“The city will provide a wood chipper for branches and free biodegradable bags are available from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily at Fire Stations 2, 3, 4 and 7 and at the Parks field office, 1325 Bancroft way.

For information on the loan of the wood chipper, call 981-7270.

New crew

Three new firefighters joined the department’s ranks in graduation ceremonies held Friday, June 5.

The new members of the helmet-and-air-tank crew—all of them trained paramedics as well—are Anthony Barlow, Matt Einspahr and Amory Langino.

They officially joint their engine com-pany’s this coming Sunday after they finish their orientations, Deputy Chief Dong said.

A pedestrian who apparently leapt in front of an Amtrak passenger train in West Berkeley Thursday morning, last week, was fatally injured, according to railroad spokesperson Vernae Graham.

Graham said the accident occurred at 10:50 a.m., nearly four hours after Amtrak San Joaquin 711 had rolled out of Bakersfield on a run to Oakland.

None of the 26 passengers or any of the crew members was injured, though passengers were delayed when the train ground to a halt after the incident, leaving the railroad to organize bus transit for passengers heading into Oakland and those headed to Bakersfield on the return run.

Traffic came to a standstill on both active rail lines through the area as the Alameda County coroner conducted an investigation. Service on one line was restored about 1:20 p.m., and the second line was back in service by 3:30.

Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Andrew J. Frankel said the investigation was being handled by the Union Police Railroad Police, an independent force which exercises jurisdiction along the company’s rights-of-way.

“Sometimes we handle the investigation because they have such a vast territory to cover,” Frankel said, “but they’re handling this one.”

Graham declined to provide any information about the victim. “We never provide that information,” she said, referring a journalist to the coroner’s office.

A spokesperson for the coroner said some information about the victim would be available later Thursday.

Pressed by repeated waves of downsizings, Bay Area journalists have been giving up pay, benefits and one of the hardest-won icons of the labor movement: pay differentials based on years of experience.

But there’s good news amongst the bad in the overwhelming affirmative vote given by members of the California Media Workers Guild for their first-ever contract with Bay Area News Group-East Bay (BANG-EB).

BANG is the Bay Area wing of newspaper magnate Dean Singleton’s MediaNews empire, and includes a majority of newspaper circulation in the Bay Area, ranging from the Marin Independent-Journal to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and includes the San Jose Mercury News.

The East Bay unit includes the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, Fremont Argus, Vacaville Reporter, Vallejo Times-Herald, Hayward Daily-Review, Tri-Valley Herald and the San Joaquin Herald, as well as associated weekly papers and websites.

Sara Steffens, who chairs the union East Bay unit, hailed Tuesday’s 57-2 vote in favor of the contract as a significant victory.

The Contra Costa Times and San Jose Mercury had both been owned by the Kight-Ridder chain, which was purchased by the Sacramento-based McClatchy Co. McClatchy sold the two Bay Area papers to Singleton, who had already purchased the Alameda News Group, which owned the Oakland Tribune and other East Bay papers.

Singleton created the East Bay division of BANG separately from the solidly union San Jose paper, and with the votes of workers at the non-union Contra Costa Times, he was able to unseat the guild from is other East Bay papers.

Tuesday’s vote marks the first successful contract drive with BANG-EB, and while the contract lacks a traditional pay scale and provides only for a base pay of $39,000, Steffens said the accord will be a boon for employees making less than the new minimum.

The downside is that the contract allows the company to propose future wage cuts, which become mandatory if workers aren’t able to agree on a settlement within two weeks after the reductions are proposed by the company.

While the contract also bars strikes and walkouts, Steffens said that the drawbacks are outweighed by union recognition, provisions for arbitrations, just-cause dismissals and guaranteed severance pay.

“This is a first contact, and we’re really, really happy because a lot of people said we wouldn’t be able to get it. It’s a ground floor and a good starting point,” she said.

Tuesday’s vote on the East Bay contract followed by 24 hours a vote at the San Jose paper, when Guild members voted 127-39 to approve a new contract that provided for an immediate 7 percent wage cut, with another 2 percent reduction on Jan. 1.

The San Jose contract also reduced vacation time for many workers, with a maximum of four weeks after nine years, and raised health insurance premiums.

Sylvia Ulloa, local vice president and a member of the San Jose unit, said the Mercury News has been significantly downsized.

“We had about 525 people in the newsroom at the newspaper’s peak,” she said. “When MediaNews bought us, we had about 350.”

The number will drop to about 100 when another provision of the new contract kicks in. The pact allows MediaNews to consolidate all its copy editing functions in Walnut Creek, meaning that editors from within the community may no longer have the final purview over stories written about their communities.

Of 30 copy editors who may be laid off, 15 could be rehired in Walnut Creek, according to the blog Paper Cuts.

Both contracts will run for 18 months.

May brought another flood of bad tidings for the newspaper business.

Platinum Equity, the Beverly Hills investment fund which bought the San Diego Union-Tribune on the first of the month, followed three days later by a move to cut the paper’s staff by 192. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles police union, one of the fund’s major investors, demanded a house cleaning of the editorial page staff because of editorials they considered hostile to police.

The month also saw the end of publication for the Tucson Citizen, which had been published longer than any other Arizona paper, and the announcement that the Ann Arbor News in Michigan will stop publishing July 23. Both will live in slimmed-down online formats.

On the brighter side, May also brought the close of Trump, The Donald’s glossy exemplar of self-promotion. Word of the magazine’s folding came on May 19.

Authorities are looking for the last suspect wanted in connection with the murder of Berkeley resident Charles Davis, Berkeley police announced Tuesday, June 9.

The City of Berkeley is offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Rafael Campbell, 24.

Davis, 25, was fatally shot and killed May 16 at 10th Street and Allston Way in West Berkeley. The shooters fled the scene, pursued by Berkeley police in a high-speed chase, ultimately leading to the death of two innocent bystanders near Children’s Hospital in Oakland. Police have arrested three of the suspects.

Campbell is also wanted for the car crash, which took the lives of Todd Perea, 27, of Brentwood, and Floyd Ross, 41, of Berkeley. Berkeley police said Campbell should be considered armed and dangerous.

Bay Area Crime Stoppers (BACS) is also offering a $2,000 reward.

Detectives are asking for the community’s help with this investigation. Anyone with any information regarding this crime is urged to call the BPD Homicide Detail at 981-5741(office) or 981-5900 (non-emergency dispatch line). Callers who wish to remain anonymous can call the BACS Tip Line at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).

Recently, as I read for and against comments in the Daily Planet concerning the restoration of the meadow at Berkeley’s marina, I realized my feelings were mixed. There is no question that the fenced trails that cross the meadow already show protection for the jack rabbits and other wild creatures that have struggled to survive there for decades. Wet areas when restoration is finished will doubtless attract migrating birds and aquatic life.

However, I too feel a lack of something important that has not yet been articulated by correspondents, and that is a lack of access to areas that are allowed just to be natural and free—free from the incessant compulsive desire to tamper with nature that so many of us feel. Walking in areas left wild and natural allows us to escape if only briefly from the busybody within.

Wild plants in wild places are crucial for our health, physical and mental. Not only might they provide subsistence food and alternative medicines, but simply being in their midst can comfort and calm the lonely and depressed. We eliminate these wild places at our peril.

Farms in Europe are obliged by law to set aside patches of natural growth to provide habitat for wildlife. It is a safe bet that these enhance the farmer’s life. They are part of the farm, as coppices or hedges, not fenced off.

Recently on television I watched a brief segment describing a place in Europe where people live to great ages. Reasons given were low-level exercise relevant to daily life, plenty of rest, and a diet of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, including a variety of wild greens.

My thoughts about this community started to become mixed up with my thoughts of the marina meadow and my awareness that my own garden is full of weeds. Since I too believe that green leafy vegetables are central to a healthy diet, and many weeds have green leaves, I thought that if my garden was so luxuriantly endowed with them, why, then, not eat them? I went out to scavenge.

This is what I found: Horseradish leaves. Wild radish leaves. Fennel fronds. Mint. An old collard that had volunteered. By the time I’d taken a few young leaves from each, I had plenty for lunch. Chopped and simmered briefly, they were delicious.

Perhaps I’ll give up trying to grow my own vegetables. It’s starting to feel compulsive—bureaucratic-municipal. I have to wire the vegetables, not as at the meadow to keep out humans, but quite the opposite, to keep out wildlife. Perhaps I’ll take down my fences and see what happens. I will become a gatherer in my own back yard.

Not only green leafy weeds produce free food. Fruits once established, such as avocadoes, blackberries, plums, even apples, are essentially wild. Flowers too, for rose hips, make delicious jam and syrup, loaded with vitamin C.

All this is hardly new. Famed gardener William Robinson who, as a fine exemplar of the genre, lived to 97, pioneered the concept and in the 19th century, wrote a book about it, The Wild Garden. (Gertrude Jekyll, octogenarian contemporary and fellow advocate of the carefree look, contributed to a magazine he published.) More recently in 1985 Violet Stevenson under the same title produced a book full of inspiring ideas and attractive photographs and drawings. Indeed, Stevenson in her introduction quotes Robinson: “a pretty plant in a free state is more attractive than any garden denizen”.

I wonder whether someone toiling in a dank basement on an exercise bicycle ever dreams of a siesta in dappled grass under a pear tree, drowsing to the hum of bumble bees, brushed by nectar-sipping swallowtails. That’s the life, on the wild and weedy side.

Opinion

Editorials

At a farmers’ market, we sat down to share a table with a mother and two small children. The little girl, who looked to be about 3, or perhaps a clever 2 and a half, announced that my companion had “a big white beard!”

“He’s a king!” she said joyfully. Her brother, 4-ish, said “No, a monster”—a category he obviously prefers to kings. My companion obligingly made a dreadful monster face, causing both to scream with pleasure.

Things are as you see them. If you expect daily life to contain kings and monsters, an idea little kids pick up from the books devoted parents read to them, you’ll see kings and monsters everywhere, and you’ll enjoy the experience.

You see what you’re looking for, but conversely you don’t see what you aren’t looking for, or what your experience hasn’t prepared you to notice. This is perhaps the kindest explanation for what seems to be Gov. Schwarzenegger’s apparent total departure from the reality-based community. Yes, the state’s in appalling trouble, but the “solutions” he proposes are wildly unlikely to solve any of our problems.

Authorizing more deep-well oil exploration off the coast? Come on! Luckily, almost every environmental organization in the business, not to mention several big-time Democrats and various editorial pages, have come out against it, so perhaps it can be stopped. Now an oil severance tax, on the other hand…

Or how about his suggestion that schoolkids be given electronic devices next year to use instead of textbooks? He clearly lacks the math skills which would quickly show this to be an expensive strategy, not to mention the child-rearing experience which would tell him that such gadgets quickly get lost or broken when maintained by the average teenager. Maria or the nannies must have done the heavy lifting in raising their four kids.

Close the state parks? There’s ample data to prove that parks bring in much more tourist revenue to adjacent towns than they cost to maintain, not to mention the serious risk of fires and other damage to parkland left without rangers.

What’s really needed is for Schwarzenegger to lock the recalcitrant Republicans into a room until they agree to raising enough tax money to pay the state’s minimum ongoing expenses. Maybe if he makes a few monster faces at them—he’s good at that—they’ll come around.

These rubes provide a classic example of the proverbial “penny-wise and pound-foolish.” If they destroy California’s educational system and fabled natural attractions, their penny-pinching constituents and their children and grandchildren will pay the bill eventually, as more and more high-tech businesses decide to locate in more appealing places.

The long-term solution to this summer’s California crisis will probably have to be three reform measures at the constitutional level.

First, it’s outrageous that big corporate property holdings are isolated from paying their just share of taxes because of the lingering effects of long-ago Proposition 13. It’s one thing to say that individual homeowners should be protected from tax increases until they die or sell their houses, since residential properties do turn over at regular intervals. It’s quite different to say that corporate holdings, which can and do stay under the same ownership for generations, should be shielded from tax increases as the value of their property increases.

Next, the requirement that tax increases require a two-thirds vote in the Legislature is just plain dysfunctional. Its disasterous effects are all around us. It has to be repealed.

Finally, the Republican legislators by and large were elected from enclaves of privilege and power, places where the worst thing that can happen to you is for your property taxes to go up by a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars. Carving up the state into super-safe districts can be blamed as much on the Democrats as on the Republicans, but the really out-of-it dinosaurs are being elected from iron-clad Republican districts, where no moderate who supports judiciously raising taxes can get past the primary. If voters in these places were exposed occasionally to reality-checks in the form of seriously contested elections, they might get with the program.

Meanwhile, in individual human terms, the cost of inaction is mounts. It’s immediate and sometimes fatal.

A friend writes to me:

“Becky, you should be doing much more coverage of the devastating human effects of the budget cuts on real people. As you know, there are kids getting kicked off of health care; elderly people denied the in-home care necessary for their survival; poor people having life-sustaining benefits cut; necessary services being eliminated; and of course people losing jobs. These cuts are occurring not only at the state level, but at the county and city levels. Real lives are being destroyed. There are limitless human interest stories on this topic—stories that are not being written anywhere, and the lack of which give the cuts a surreal, bloodless quality.”

He’s quite right, of course, and I’ve forwarded his suggestions to our over-worked reporters. But it occurs to me that many of our readers are in the best position to report on what’s going on in the trenches. Some have already done so in this issue.

We’d like to invite the rest of you, our readers, to submit your own horror stories for the Planet to publish. We’d be looking for about 400 descriptive words about what the state budget cuts are doing to you yourself or to someone you know. We’d even like to try linking on our web site to YouTube videos of people telling their stories in their own words, if you know how to make and post them.

Will any of this persuade the Terminator and the Repugs to get off the dime? Sad to say, it’s unlikely. But does anyone out there have any better ideas? Let us know if you do.

Public Comment

The Internet has been blamed for the demise of book stores in California, but the real culprit is the sales tax. While the Internet has made book selling more of a national market, stores such as Black Oaks Books could compete and survive if it were not for the sales tax. The sales tax makes books 10 percent more expensive, which is often less than the media-rate shipping charge from an out-of-state seller. Unlike stores that cater to a mostly local customer base, book stores are generally unable to pass the sales tax on to their customers, so it eats directly into profit. With an already thin profit margin, the reduction in profit caused by the tax inflicts losses, and the store goes out of business.

Some people advocate a national sales tax, but that would just promote competition from overseas. The solution is to completely abolish taxes on sales. The sales tax is a regressive, antiquated tax not suited to the global economy of the 21st century. California has an income and property tax, so why also have a sales tax? Since the sales tax is not generally tax deductible, the sales tax provides a windfall tax gain to the federal government. We should eliminate the book-store-killing sales tax and shift taxation to tax-deductible property and income taxes. Both the rich and the poor would pay less taxes, more money would stay in California, and book stores would be able to survive.

Fred Foldvary

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LOW-INCOME PARKING

Editors, Daily Planet:

On April 30, 1987, the Berkeley City Council passed an ordinance (5803) establishing preferential parking guidelines, among which was included Berkeley Municipal Code 14.08.130. This code reads: “A 50 percent discount on applicable fees will be granted to persons meeting low-income criteria established by the Director of Finance.”

Every year since 1987, when the ordinance has been updated, that discount stipulation has not been included, but it became the practice of the Finance Department to continue to allow the discount. In 2004, the code (6762; 5803 14.08.150)) stipulated: “The Finance Department and the Planning Division are empowered to issue rules and regulations not inconsistent with this ordinance.” This year, for the first time, the finance director, Robert Hicks, without any direction from the City Council, has decided to issue a rule inconsistent with this ordinance by discontinuing the discount for low-income residents of Berkeley (those with an income of no more than $34,000). In the past, the $30 fee was reduced to $15.

I am protesting this arbitrary decision by the finance director, a decision which is not only disrespectful of the low-income residents of this city but will cause them great hardship.

Estelle Jelinek

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DON PERATA

Editors, Daily Planet:

So now that he is cleared of wrongdoing, Don Perata feels that nothing will stop him on his quest to become mayor of Oakland. I beg to differ. Perata has already had a bad influence on the city by favoring the interests of outside developers over ordinary citizens. For example, he and Mayor Jerry Brown used the so-called three Rs in 2000 to help their allies either get elected or win re-election to public office.

In December 2002, Perata had one of his friends who is a developer from Dublin, get city council approval to build houses on the Leona Quarry over the objection of residents who live there. In 2003, while still a state senator, he had the state school superintendent take control over the Oakland school district over the objection of the Oakland school board.

In conclusion, if Don Perata becomes mayor in 2010, expect too many developments here in Oakland which will result in water shortages in the city.

Billy Trice, Jr.

Oakland

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TRUE COLORS

Editors, Daily Planet:

I am so thankful to Asa Dodsworth and Steven Finacom for exposing the City of Berkeley’s true colors regarding gardens and fruit trees, and the hypocrisy of the so-called Climate Action Plan. I hope interested people will attend the event at the Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship at 7 p.m. Monday, June 22, at BFUU (Cedar and Bonita), where Asa and others will be speaking about the city’s attack on urban gardens.

The larger newspapers covered the fanfare over the Climate Action Plan without noticing the discrepancies between the city’s policies and climate issues. It’s a perfect portrait of why we need the perfect nexus of our community newspaper and our active, clear-headed citizens.

Carol Denney

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THE MEADOW

Editors, Daily Planet:

This once beautiful area has been turned into a wasteland. The wildlife is all gone, the whole area is fenced off, replete with an ominous sign that says keep out, no trespassing, no parking, etc. No one can use it. They call is restoration. What it really is desecration. One more open space gone.

The truth is this is just another pork barrel project, and when the money runs out it will be abandoned. They have been milking this for quite a while and hopefully it will end soon. Then the field will grow wild again, the fences will be circumvented, the wildlife will return and all the people who once enjoyed this multi-purpose filed will return.

Randall Broder

El Sobrante

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KPFA

Editors, Daily Planet:

I read a statement in your paper that stated the managers were confused when they called the police after Nadra Foster refused to leave KPFA in August 2008. I was directly involved as the manager who handled the incident and I had no confusion over the series of events that led to her arrest. Nadra had no unpaid or paid staff position at the time of the incident. She was interfering with an employee from performing his job by refusing to leave the studio. When Nadra refused to leave the building, after I and another manager talked with her, the officers were called at the advice of Human Resources.

KPFA has a history of allowing individuals who have behavior problems to enter the station. Employees working at the station must be allowed to perform their duties in a respectful environment. There are safe workplace policies that must be enforced. There were prior incidents involving this individual yelling at management that went as far back as 2003. There was an earlier altercation in May 2008 involving Nadra which resulted in her not being allowed back to KPFA. As a manager decisions made are not easy and not everyone will agree with those decisions. A person who chooses not to cooperate with officers and instead tries to fight them is a potentially volatile individual. KPFA is a workplace and as such they have the right to expect people to abide by rules that honor everyone that work there, both paid and unpaid.

Lois Withers

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NO UNIONS,

NO WHISTLEBLOWERS

Editors, Daily Planet:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein prides herself on her environmental record. But, by opposing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), she is hurting the whistleblowers who so often alert us to egregious environmental damage being done by corporations. The EFCA will make it harder for companies to delay union votes for interested workers. It will also increase penalties for illegally firing or retaliating against an employee for union activity.

A fair and direct path to forming a union is crucial for the environment because unions provide strong protections for their members who blow the whistle on illegal dumping and pollution. Sen. Feinstein needs to join every other Congressional Democrat from California in supporting the EFCA if she wishes to live up to her reputation for environmental leadership.

Christina Armor

Richmond

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HEALTH CARE

Editors, Daily Planet:

In the last decade, health care costs have risen five times faster than wages in California, according to a new report by Health Care for America Now. Rising costs put small businesses and working people in our community in a desperate squeeze.

In California, Kaiser Permanente and WellPoint, Inc. control roughly 60 percent of the health insurance markets. This concentration of private health care coverage devastates competition and leaves no incentives for the monopolies to keep prices down for us consumers. And without choices, its California’s working families and small business owners who suffer most. The data in a new report from Health Care for America Now shows how much of California’s market is controlled by one of two insurance companies (Kaiser Permanente or WellPoint, Inc).

By giving us a choice of a public health insurance plan that’s available to everyone, Congress can break the insurance industry’s monopoly. A choice of a public health insurance plan is good for consumers. It will allow us to choose the plan that meets our needs the best. More competition and choice means more efficiency as insurance plans compete and prices go down. And that’s good for families and small business.

Congress should give us the choice of a public health insurance plan when they reform health care.

John Lynch

•

SAFETY NET

Editors, Daily Planet:

I’m 58 years old. I was an occupational therapist. My job was to help other people and I loved my work.

I’ve worked ever since I was 12 years old—first as a babysitter. In high-school I worked as a sales clerk to pay for my school clothes and spending money. I put myself through college doing odd jobs.

Over 10 years ago I came down with a devastating immune system illness. Much of the time I’m bedridden and am unable to speak. I have only limited use of my arms. I desperately wish that I could do the work that I so love. Without a great deal of help from home health aides that are paid for by the state, I wouldn’t be alive.

The governor is now proposing to slash health care and the help I’m getting. He has stated that thousands of people who are in my position should instead go and live in nursing homes. Yet it would cost the state five times more money to live in a nursing home than it costs to maintain me in my home.

Will his next proposal be to turn people out of nursing homes into the streets to die?

Anyone can become ill or injured. Many people are only one pay check away from being on the street. Is it only the wealthiest people who should be allowed to have adequate health care?

If we don’t want to revert to a dog-eat-dog social system, we must not abandon those of us who are incapacitated and can’t care for themselves. To do this, we must generate the revenues to pay for it. We must overhaul our current system and create a system of taxation so that the wealthiest individuals and corporations pay more taxes.

Please contact Budget Committee Chairwoman Noreen Davis (916) 319-2107 and your local legislators. Strongly urge them not to balance the budget by cutting critical services to health, education, and other public services but by increasing revenues.

This is the only way we can all have a safety net that will be there if we truly need it.

A. Cunningham

Emeryville

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AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Editors, Daily Planet:

I recently moved into non-profit affordable housing in Oakland and have a few observations about Helen Rippier Wheeler’s June 4 commentary, “Berkeley Low-Income Rental Housing Not Necessarily Affordable.”

First, using HUD’s Section 8 website as my reference, they list not one but two types of Section 8 housing: individual, which Wheeler notes, and Project-based Section 8. I live in the latter in East Oakland. The way the project-based Section 8 works is after one year occupancy by residents of a new building, each individual apartment gets the Section 8 designation (it does not travel with the resident upon leaving).

Second, Wheeler uses the term “low-income” repeatedly in her article. Currently, there are two categories below low-income i.e., very low-income and extremely low-income.

Wheeler makes a strong point when she writes “the best way to retain BHA staff is to provide public comment supporting a subsidy.” This can be done at meetings of the City Council and to inform your councilmember. If low-income tenants do not attend and show themselves, real estate developers and landlords who oppose “affordable housing” in Berkeley will be the only people present when City Council votes on low-income housing issues.” Last night (June 3) several extremely low-income seniors and me appeared before the Oakland Housing Commission to seek support for the Oakland Housing Element. The commission voted 6-0 to recommend the Housing Element to the Oakland City Council.

Joe Kempkes

Oakland

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TEARS, TWO NANCYS AND RON

Editors, Daily Planet:

While it may be considered inappropriate to speak poorly of the dead, since there are so many dead as a result of Ronald Reagan’s presidency who cannot speak, it is only fair to remember, as the two Nancys tearfully unveiled his statue, that it was he who sponsored death squads in Angola, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mozambique and Nicaragua which resulted in the murder of more than 500,000 innocent civilians; that he illegally attacked Grenada and Libya, and defied a World Court ruling against his Nicaraguan war. He was also responsible for the Iran-Contra scandal, swapping arms for hostages with the Iranian mullahs, and defied the will of Congress and subverted the U.S. Constitution by diverting funds from these arms sales to his illegal wars in Central America, as well as allowing cheap drugs to flood U.S. inner cities so that drug money could also finance his wars. He supported the genocidal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, as well as the Argentinian “Dirty War” where 30,000 civilians “disappeared,” not to mention his support of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Moving on, he failed to enforce federal labor and environmental laws and his lax oversight set the stage for the Savings and Loan $500 billion dollar scandal and the massive financial scandals we suffer today; and his raising of payroll taxes while all but eliminating progressive income tax for the wealthy, resulted in the largest transfer of wealth from poor to rich in history—before the Bush era. It is, indeed, something the cry about.

Tom Miller

Oakland

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PRAISE FOR SCHWARZENEGGER

Editors, Daily Planet:

Gov. Schwarzenegger’s plan for California is getting a bum rap.

We’re told California’s large population renders it “ungovernable.” By eliminating welfare and senior programs, old and infirm people will die more quickly, thereby reducing surplus population. Similarly by reducing the medical coverage for sickly children, we will be “culling the herd.” It’s brilliant.

His proposal to close the parks will give us thousands of acres on which to live. With our schools gutted, our public colleges closing doors, our homes foreclosed, and so many of us “between jobs,” we will have a golden opportunity to live off the land in the parks—land which formerly was used only by sunbathers, surfers and other elitists. Our states’ pioneer spirit will be revived as thousands flock to the wide open spaces to apply the homesteading and vigilante skills that made America great.

Inner city youth will thrive in this new environment since they have already been well educated in the fine arts of firearm usage, militia organizing and self defense. Boys in the ‘Hood will easily transform to Boys in the Wood. Same for the thousands of people the governor releases from prison—at long last, an environment that meets their skill set.

Finally, the problem of illegal immigration will be solved too, because no one will want to come here anymore.

Well done, governor, well done.

Larry Hendel

•

STATE PARKS

Editors, Daily Planet:

I was horrified to learn that the state is considering closing many of our state parks.

I understand there is a budget crisis, but the parks represent a tiny portion of the total budget, and closing them would come at a huge cost to the people.

In a world that has become increasingly developed, it is more important now than ever to protect our access to nature.

I hike Mount Diablo every day, and cannot imagine being denied the opportunity to smell the sweet scent of Buckeye blossoms or hear the beautiful song of the Black-headed Grosbeak!

I truly hope our elected representative will do the right thing, and preserve our right to enjoy our parks!

Laura Vonnegut

Concord

•

TORTURE

Editors, Daily Planet:

According to a June 3, 2009, Associated Press-GfK survey, 52 percent of Americans say torture is justified in some cases to thwart terrorists attacks. More than two thirds of Republicans say torture can be justified compared with just over a third of Democrats. This poll comes on the heels of former Vice President Cheney’s unctuous justifications that “enhanced interrogation techniques” (a euphemism for torture), sanctioned by the Bush administration, are not torture. Cheney dismissed criticism as “contrived indignation and phony moralizing.” Unfortunately, this poll seems to indicate that too many Americans are believing Cheney’s big lie.

Those who sanctioned torture or justify torture either don’t know the law, or advocate flaunting the law, or have lost their moral bearings. Human torture is not only morally unacceptable—it is also a crime. Waterboarding, for example, is explicitly prohibited by the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions. Using torture places us in the same company as history’s infamous torturers. Waterboarding, for example, dates back to the Dark Ages. By using torture, we lost any ideological advantage we might have had—the promotion of democracy, freedom and human rights. We became the thugs our enemies say we are.

How could a country with a Judaic-Christian heritage even consider torture justifiable. But then, I remember that many torture methods were invented during the Roman Catholic Church inquisitions beginning in the 1300s, that torture was used during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693, and that the public lynchings of blacks during the 19th and 20th centuries often included burning and torture.

And who can forget the U.S Army School of Americas (SOA)/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, based in Fort Benning, Georgia, which trains Latin American security personnel in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. The SOA training manuals advocated torture, extortion, and execution. Is it any wonder that SOA graduates are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America? The United States used many of these same torture techniques at Guantánamo Bay Prison, Abu Ghraib, and by proxy through our rendition program.

Have we regressed as a society to where torture is yet again acceptable or never was unacceptable? Apparently so.

I was disturbed to learn of the threats made against the Berkeley Daily Planet because of its stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Such threats and attacks seem to me to border on the same kind of fascism that groups like FLAME should be trying to combat. I, for one, support the Daily Planet and will make a special effort to patronize those businesses that continue to advertise through the paper.

Julie Anderson

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THUGS

Editors, Daily Planet:

This is addressed to Msrs. Spitzer, Gertz, Sinkinson and like-minded associates:

Sirs, you are thugs of the most despicable sort. Your attempts to subvert the expression of political opinions not your own are worthy of Iran, North Korea, or China. They do not belong in the United States of America or anywhere in the Free World, much less in the home of the Free Speech Movement. Further, you are cowards, attacking innocent business people with no role in what you regard as objectionable speech. If you think you are forwarding Israel’s interests you are seriously deluded. I am deeply ashamed that some fellow citizens would feel justified in such behavior. I call on you to cease immediately and apologize to the Daily Planet and others you have attacked.

Paul A. Rude

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STEREOTYPES

Editors, Daily Planet:

While we firmly embrace freedom of the press, we also hope that newspapers, like the Daily Planet, adhere to the rules of good journalism. Richard Brennerman’s article purposefully miscasts those who have voiced their opposition to what they see as the Daily Planet’s one-sided coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The writer labels those individuals who opine on the paper’s bias as militant right-wing Zionists. His stereotyping is most incorrect. Those readers who have contacted us over the years about the Daily Planet’s anti-Israel writing represent many different political stands—from progressive to conservative, with most representing liberal to centrist positions. The majority of the East Bay Jewish community strongly support Israel and join the people of Israel’s hope to live in peace and dignity with the people of Palestine.

Riva Gambert

Director, Israel Center, Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay

Myrna David

East Bay Regional Director, Jewish

Community Relations Council

•

CLOSING OFF DEBATE

Editors, Daily Planet:

Much of the rancor regarding the Berkeley Daily Planet and the issue of Palestine is directed to a letter to the editor written by Kurosh Arianpour in 2006. It was indeed a hateful letter, but it did represent a point of view. A point of view many of us may wish did not exist, but it does nonetheless. However, just because it was printed in the Daily Planet, does not mean that it was the perspective of the editors or staff of the Planet. That should be obvious, as the Planet has published a wide-range of letters of various perspectives on the subject.

Recently, Moment Magazine, founded by Elie Wiesel and others in 1975, published some views in their “Ask the Rabbis” section on the question of “How Should Jews Treat Their Arab Neighbors?” One response was like this:

“Judaism’s key teaching is that all are created in God’s image. Everyone, not ‘everyone whose nationality includes no extremists.’ Israel’s leading human rights group is, significantly, called B’Tselem, “in the image.”

That is a humanist point of view that many of us in Berkeley have embraced. But the Moment did not hesitate to print a very contrary point of view. Another response included this:

“I don’t believe in western morality...The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle).”

What could be more hateful than that? What could be more anti-Jewish than that, in that it claims that the “Jewish way” is the mass killing of civilians? No rational person would ascribe that point of view to the editors of the magazine. I think the editors of Moment did a service however, as they printed that extreme point of view by that one Rabbi to show that it exists. We can then work to confront it.

What we need is more discussion, more debate to achieve peace with justice in the Middle East. Closing off debate will not be helpful at all, as that does nothing to stop the suffering of the peoples who live there. Saying and doing nothing is to support for an intolerable status quo. I firmly believe we can create a better future for all, and the hard questions must be confronted.

Jim Harris

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SCORING POINTS

Editors, Daily Planet:

To resort to ad hominem tactics against your opponents, signals that they have scored significant points against your own position and you have run out of rebuttals. This is how I read the series of personal attacks against some pro-Israel activists published recently in the Daily Planet. The DP has hardly been unbiased when it comes to the State of Israel. That’s fine. You are entitled to your opinions. But, what is troublesome is the lack of good judgment in persistently publishing vile and hate-filled points of view which lend credence to arguments that the DP has no journalistic integrity and panders to extremists, anti-Semites and bigots. Furthermore, the reliance on stereotypes, one-sided prejudicial depictions and other distortions—Richard Brenneman’s article dubbing his critics as “Zio-Cons” and linking them to Likud and George W. Bush the most recent example—insults the intelligence of DP readers.

Jews in our community hold many different views regarding Israel and they do not look to the DP as a source of news or analysis of Israeli actions and policies. However, they do expect a degree of discernment, fairness and adherence to community standards of decency and respect. It should not require the objections of our civic leaders to identify the objectionable matter the editors and publishers of the DP seem so oblivious to. Most certainly the members of our community--Jew and non-Jew alike--do not expect or desire to read articles and editorials, signed and unsigned, which advance agendas preaching mindless hatred.

Seymour Kessler

Co-chair, Bridges to Israel-Berkeley

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DEPLORABLE

Editors, Daily Planet:

I deplore the campaign of intimidation against the Daily Planet for publishing views that some people find anti-Semitic. However, I fail to see why the Planet should devote space to the endlessly acrimonious Israel-Palestine issue. Certainly it’s an important topic, but there are numerous media outlets where people can state their views on the matter, and I think few Planet readers are interested in the back-and-forth bashing between the partisans on this issue. For that matter, I don’t think the Planet should devote space to international issues at all. The Planet should focus on doing what no one else is doing—providing coverage of events and key issues in the greater Berkeley area, as well as a forum for discussion of those issues.

Steve Meyers

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DO NOT SPEAK FOR ME

Editors, Daily Planet:

If Jews have learned else nothing from their history, they should have learned the importance of standing up to be counted, especially against rabble-rousing apostles of racial, ethnic and religious stereotyping and intolerance and the bullying tactics they often use to promote their nefarious politics of exclusion. Jews have been the victims of such movements for centuries and ought by now to understand their danger, whether the movements are led by those bigots who have traditionally despised the Jewish people or by those who claim the mantle of Judaism to pursue similar ends and tactics.

Therefore, please add my name to the list of Berkeley Jews who wish to disassociate themselves from those who claim to speak for me while intimidating this newspaper and its journalists and strong-arming their readers and advertisers into severing ties with a publication that has aired all shades of opinion on Mideast politics. These bullies do not speak for me, as they apparently claim to.

Those who wield the label “anti-Semite” like a lethal weapon, indiscriminately, at all opponents of the current policies of the Israeli state are unwittingly furthering anti-Semitism and feeding criticism of Israel. I am a Jew, I vigorously oppose the policies of the current and recent Israeli governments, and I cannot stand by idly as smear artists brand me and all other opponents of Israel’s intransigence as anti-Semites.

As a practical matter, do the people who make such sweeping, unfounded charges as those leveled against the Berkeley Daily Planet really want to include all opponents of current Israeli governmental policies under the category of “anti-Semites,” as their rhetoric suggests? If so, they will create the very monster they fear. True anti-Semites—those who despise all Jews—will find themselves with lots of welcome new company, critics of Israeli policies who were pushed into the category of anti-Semite not by their hatred of Jews but by the incendiary rhetoric of Israeli supporters who chose to place them there.

As a longtime journalist, I will not defend every editorial decision of the Berkeley Daily Planet, but I will gladly speak for the importance of supporting a publication that is under sustained attack and threats of financial retribution because it has published letters and columns that stray from the “party line” of the Israeli lobby.

As both a Jew and a civil libertarian, I shudder at the notion attributed to one of the Daily Planet’s tormentors: “The First Amendment as the Last Refuge of Scoundrels.” In fact, the First Amendment is a cornerstone of the constitutional guarantees that protect the rights of minorities—including Jews—in this country.

The pro-Israel bullies say they speak for Berkeley’s Jews. They don’t speak for this one.

Peter Sussman

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LIKUDNIK NUTCASES

Editors, Daily Planet:

Although I have disagreed with the Daily Planet on everything from homosexual marriage to gun control to socialized medicine to the Obama Cult, I must speak out against the censorship efforts of a few serious nuts. I wrote the East Bay Express after they self-servingly published Dan Spitzer’s atrocious screed a few weeks ago. I mentioned Spitzer’s obsessiveness in defending all of the many crimes of Israeli since 1948. The Express has degenerated into the Gammon Gazette as it is almost all devoted to one man’s dubious assertions. The day after I wrote the Express I looked up the Gertz website and I found myself libeled as a very dangerous person! Hmm. When you are dealing with possibly violent Likudnik nutcases that may be a good rep to have. Thanks for giving us the background on Gertz’s inherited wealth. There is a now a raging debate in libertarian circles, initiated by Houston attorney, Stephen Kinsella, on whether the copyright and patent laws should be abolished as a form of special protectionism incompatible with the free market. The main result of these laws seems to be the perpetuation of generations of parasites living off the ideas of some ancestor.

The Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine is a prime example. These Randroids have lived off the works created by Rand who has been dead for 27 years. Unfortunately Ayn herself was an admitted anti-Arab racist (see Ayn Rand Q & A book) who condemned other forms of “racism” as “the lowest form of collectivism.” She appeared to have much in common with the “leftwing” Gertz, thus showing up the whole phony “left-right” debate for the fraud it is. When I lived in Berkeley in the 1980s and worked on the Measure E campaign in 1984 I met many of these proclaimed leftist racists who equated criticism of Israel with “anti-Semitism.” As if those of us who oppose Israeli policies would applaud them if Israel was run by Gentiles! Only the stupidest of asses could believe this.

On this matter at least, stick to your principles, Becky.

Michael P. Hardesty

Oakland

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PERSECUTION

Editors, Daily Planet:

I like the Daily Planet because of the policy of publishing all points of view in the letters sections, as well as transparent reporting. I am upset to read about “The Campaign Against The Daily Planet” in the article by Richard Brenneman. I plan to shop at Planet advertisers, and am considering purchasing an ad myself!

Richard List

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THREATS

Editors, Daily Planet:

Thank you for the thorough review of the “campaign” against the Daily Planet in your June 4 edition.

I remember well the commentary by Kurosh Arianpour in 2006. I told Becky O’Malley that I didn’t like it. There are other letters and commentaries in the Daily Planet that I don’t like, but I realize that the Daily Planet position on free speech means, not only printing my letters of opinion, but my putting up with, or skipping through, the repetitive rants by some people, to whom I would only comment, “get a life.”

But until now, I had no idea of the strength and duration of their obsession. Unsatisfied with having their attacks on the paper printed by the Daily Planet, they apparently try to intimidate advertisers, using commercial pressure to destroy a small but valuable resource to our community.

My response to these attackers is to concentrate on carefully studying and memorizing the ads in the Planet so that I can remember to patronize these businesses as often as I can afford, and thanking them for advertising in the Daily Planet. I urge others to do the same.

Let’s see now, tomorrow, lunch at The Vault, and what’s coming up at Ashkenaz? And aren’t we about ready to hire someone to help with some garden maintenance?

I am a Jewish woman who has visited Israel/Palestine twice and have seen the atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinian people. I urge any advertisers in the Daily Planet to resist attempts by Zionist extremists to force the Daily Planet to either concede to Zionist censorship or go out of business.

In Hebron, Jewish settlers regularly attack the indigenous Palestinian people. Children cannot safely walk to school and the settlers have spray painted slogans like “Gas the Arabs” on the doors of Palestinian homes. These are the facts and I dare anyone to call me an anti-Semite for stating them. Whether you check Israeli human rights organizations or Palestinian human rights organizations and look at data on civilians killed by the Israeli army or civilians whose homes have been demolished or Israeli checkpoints and the apartheid wall—you can only conclude that Israel is using much the same strategies as occupying armies everywhere: ethnic cleansing and genocide. The goal of the Jewish State of Israel is to expand and choke off any possibility of Palestinian self-determination. Yet, after decades of military occupation and crimes against humanity, the Jewish people are no safer. It is the ultimate disservice to Jewish people to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. How dare pro-Israeli propagandists claim that Israel is the “sole democracy in the Middle East” and then attempt to silence criticism.

Jim Sinkinson and others who threaten the Daily Planet must be exposed and rejected as enemies of democratic discussion and social justice for all people.

Arlene Eisen

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RANTING STUPIDITY

Editors, Daily Planet:

Enough already of these creeps—couldn’t you just ignore them? One thing is to publish letters to the editor, another is to give free publicity to ranting stupidity.

Hurray for Becky O’Malley & Co.

Bernard Rosenthal

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AN ‘AGING RADICAL’

SPEAKS OUT

Editors, Daily Planet:

I am a 32-year-old “aging radical” (by John Gertz’s standards) and Berkeley resident who has read your paper for years. I was surprised to read about the campaign against it, and after perusing dpwatchdog.com and factsandlogic.org (which gets the Schoenhard prize for most ironic URL), I am downright shocked these people pose any kind of a threat to your advertising. The hate and hyperbole on those sites is almost comical, and seems like a drunken imitation of ’50s Red Scare tactics (commie bashing included for nostalgia). My favorite section of dpwatchdog is the ominous heading “The Conn of Hallinan.” I guess it’s a Berkeley tradition to be host to fringe ideological zealots dancing on the edge of a 5150 hold, but the suppression of speech has never been a Berkeley value.

I would like your advertisers to know that if this letter is published, in the next week or two my girlfriend and I will patronize as many of these businesses as we can. Certainly the eateries and grocery stores, if not the insurance agents and lawyers.

I will next e-mail the antagonist sites and suggest garnishing their websites with animated gifs of torches and Senator McCarthy wagging a finger at the Daily Planet for emphasis.

Jeff Schoenhard

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ZIO-CON HATERS

Editors, Daily Planet:

Bravo to the Daily Planet for a good old fashioned journalistic smackdown! It’s about time John Gertz and Dan Spitzer were outed as the hostile, angry bigots they are! Gertz has repeatedly pounced on anyone and everyone who dares to criticize Israel and Spitzer has roamed the local media landscape for years like a vigilante of hate, libeling and terrorizing anyone who stands in his way. Daily Planet supporters, Jews or non-Jews, ought to voice their support for the paper and give their patronage to the paper’s advertisers. But readers should make no mistake: Gertz, Spitzer and Sinkinson are not just attacking the Planet and its advertisers, they’re attacking you and me, they’re attacking our right to speak our minds and voice our opinions. If readers don’t speak up we’re just allowing a gang of thugs to dictate the limits of our public discourse and to curtail our freedom of speech and our right to dissent.

Steve Reichner

Oakland

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FREE EXPRESSION Editors, Daily Planet:

Woodrow Wilson is quoted in Naomi Wolf’s book Give Me Liberty as follows: “I have always believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is advertise the fact by speaking.” This is why what the Planet has been doing is a good thing.

Was anyone who read Kurosh Arianpour’s letter persuaded by it that he was right? Certainly, there are those who would agree with Arianpour, because they have been indoctrinated with the same prejudices, but they would hold those beliefs in any case. The value in publishing that letter is that it shows what Israel is up against—mindless bigots who would not “peacefully coexist” with Israelis no matter what Israel does, because such people are incapable of regarding Jews as human beings.

Are Muslims the enemies of Israel? The Qur’an says, “Those who follow the Jewish scriptures...and any who believe in God and the Last Day and work righteousness shall have their reward with their Lord: on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.” (Surah II:62) Real Muslims believe this verse is a revelation from God—how can they be the enemies of a state that is attempting to follow the Jewish scriptures?

Are Dispensationalist “Christian” fortunetellers like John Hagee friends of Israel? These people regard the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 as an event akin to a fly hitting a spider’s web. They believe Jews are going to hell unless they have accepted Jesus as their personal savior and believe he is God. They are watching for the demolition of Al-Aqsa mosque, so the temple will be rebuilt, which they expect will trigger a series of events that will be hell on earth for Israelis. While they are in favor of giving Israel money, they are doing so in the hope that their dire predictions about the Middle East will come true.

Dispensationalist prophecies may prove to be self-fulfilling, in which case Israelis can only expect to suffer. But even if Dispensationalist “End Time” prophecies don’t pan out, one might reasonably wonder how the psychologies of such people might mutate over the coming years. These are superstitious people who seem to perceive Jews as symbols—omens—rather than as people. Might they not begin to demonize Israelis if their timetable for the return of Jesus and the End of the World doesn’t work out as they imagine it will?

In conclusion, I must express the hope that the Planet’s policy of enabling freedom of expression in this community will continue. It is the only forum many women have to express their views on religion and the Middle East, as well as many other issues.

Chadidjah McFall

•

OPEN FORUM

EDITOR’S NOTE: Conn Hallinan submitted this letter to the East Bay Express in response to a letter by Dan Spitzer that the paper published. The Express did not publish Hallinan’s letter.

In his letter to the East Bay Express, “Ministries of Hate,” Dan Spitzer accuses the Daily Planet of “Israeli and Jew-bashing,” and implies that the paper does not support the existence of Israel. I am the twice-a-month foreign policy columnist for the Daily Planet, so I thought I ought to weigh in on this subject.

First, there is an implication that the Planet is filled with attacks on Israel. I suggest people read it to find out if that is true. For instance, I have written 88 columns for the Planet since mid-2005. Of those, 11.5 have concerned Israel (and three of those were written during the recent Gaza war). Some of my columns have indeed “bashed” current policies, others have chronicled the courage of the Israeli peace movement that has resisted house demolitions, the separation wall, the endless roadblocks, and the brutality of the occupation. I have never argued that all Israelis think the same thing and would never imply that there is a linkage between those policies and being Jewish. There are an enormous number of currents in the Jewish community and to try to put those under a single rubric is simply anti-Semitic. Because I deal with foreign policy, and because the Middle East is a critical focus for the United States, Israel is going to be a subject of my columns now and then. To call it an “obsession” is simply false.

Second, I have no idea if the Daily Planet has a position on whether it supports the existence of Israel. I do. I support a two-state solution that guarantees the security of Israel within its 1967 borders. There may be some adjustments of these borders, but that should be decided on as part of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. I strongly believe that Jerusalem should be divided—it constitutes about one third of Palestinian gross domestic product—and that there should be a resolution of the refugee question that does not alter the makeup of the Israeli state. In practice, I think this will mean compensation for the land and wealth lost when Palestinians were expelled or fled.

Third, ads to the Daily Planet have fallen off because advertisers have been targeted by FLAME, an extremist organization that is headed up by right-wing neo-conservative Daniel Pipes. Pipes is one of those laptop bombardiers who is lobbying to attack Iran and Syria, and who strongly supported the invasion of Iraq. The Daily Planet will soon report on exactly how that operation has been run, but suffice it to say that advertisers have avoided the Planet primarily because they have been lobbied and strong-armed by FLAME and others to withdraw their business. And why? Because there is a fringe that will do whatever it has to do to silence criticism of the Israeli government. Not in Israel, mind you, where critique and debate are lively and pointed. Indeed, I could not have written my column on ethnic cleansing in Israel without the outstanding reporting of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and websites run by Peace Now and Jewish Peace News.

Becky O’Malley is an old fashioned First Amendment type. She pretty much prints anything. I know, because one letter writer characterized me as an anti-Semite, a charge that a number of readers wrote in to challenge. That is the point. The First Amendment is about debate, point and counterpoint. Nothing is so dangerous to the First Amendment as silence, and yet that is exactly what the campaign to destroy the advertising base of the Daily Planet is aimed at doing.

Dan Spitzer is passionate about his beliefs, which is fine. But terms like “Jew-bashing,” “merchants of hatred,” and “sickening screed” do not advance the discussion of deeply important things. Does Spitzer think the settlements are a good idea? That Jerusalem should be undivided? OK, let’s talk about it. I don’t agree with him, but I don’t think he is monster or a bad person for holding those beliefs. We disagree. If we all turned down the rhetoric and turned up the discussion, we might just find we have more common ground than you would first imagine.

Conn Hallinan

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HAVE PITY

Editors, Daily Planet:

We should have pity on those whose souls are so impoverished and culturally warped that they would attempt to destroy a treasured community institution. The Berkeley Daily Planet provides multi-dimensional space for information, insight, and opinion from and about so many fields: the arts, science, nature, history, education, literature, commerce, labor, ecology, conflicts (civil and otherwise), religion, politics, home repair and more.

I hope that the Planet survives and that we are able to express support and/or criticism of Berkeley, the University of California, America, the Planet, God and any other entity or concepts.

Richard Craig

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CELEBRATING DEBATE

Editors, Daily Planet:

One of the characteristics of Jewish people is that we love to debate, we relish hearing and expressing (often loudly) different opinions on everything under the sun. I remember as a child I would listen avidly to the grown-ups’ heated discussions expounding on all sorts of subjects from politics to the latest theater review.

But whatever their differences, no matter how strong their opinions or extreme a point of view, never, never was there an insult or a personal attack, never a threat against someone because they disagreed. People might get excited and shout at each other but would never go out and publicly slander someone who took an opposing position,

Whoever the people are who are vilifying and trying to hurt the Planet for printing the various opinions on the Israel-Palestine situation, I do not recognize them as Jews. They sound like provocateurs just trying to foster anti-Semitism.

I’m sure the Planet will not be intimidated and will continue to earn the respect of readers and supporters for its openness and fairness.

Lydia Gans

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COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS

Editors, Daily Planet:

I sincerely doubt the editor of this paper is intentionally anti-Israel. I once had an e-mail exchange with her and found she could be suddenly caustic; the quality resonates with a tone I often hear in her editorial writing. Nonetheless, the paper itself is a good community resource. Sure, it might be nice if different folks ran it, but that’s not the case. These are newspaper owners, after all. In the music business it’s often said that hard qualities like arrogance or belligerence may even be requisite for some owners and promoters. Bill Graham was a classic example. Without them we’d have fewer venues and institutions. Probably best to live with how this paper is run in order to continue having its benefits.

Sandy Rothman

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BULLYING TACTICS

Editors, Daily Planet:

Thank you for the complete story on the struggle you are going through with ultra-Zionists Jim Sinkinson, John Gertz, and Dan Spitzer. It’s important for the community to know this story and to oppose the bullying tactics of a few extremists who believe that Israel can do no wrong, and that those who want to discuss the situation freely are somehow against Israel’s security or are anti-Semites.

I am a Jew and peace activist, and I am fervently opposed to the militaristic and inhumane policies of the Israeli government. I’m not for militarism and killing, whether done by Israel, Hamas, or the United States. People who want peace in the Middle East include the majority of Israelis. Sinkinson, Gertz and Spitzer are working against the desires of the Israelis themselves. Perhaps they should reflect on their misplaced loyalty to the hawks and not the citizens of Israel.

Readers with open minds about Israel’s unapologetic militarism should watch a documentary on Israel’s attack on the defenseless and clearly marked American ship, the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967, which killed 34 Americans.

In his article, “USS Liberty Vet Awarded the Silver Star; Navy Vet Honored, Foiled Israeli Attack,”, Ray McGovern says “The infamy is two-fold: (1) the Liberty, a virtually defenseless intelligence collection platform prominently flying an American flag in international waters, came under deliberate attack by Israeli aircraft and three 60-ton Israeli torpedo boats off the coast of the Sinai on a cloudless June afternoon during the six-day Israeli-Arab war; and (2) President Lyndon Johnson called back carrier aircraft dispatched to defend the Liberty lest Israel be embarrassed—the start of an unconscionable cover-up, including top Navy brass, that persists to this day.”

Cynthia Papermaster

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STOLEN PAPERS?

Editors, Daily Planet:

I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you but, apparently, hundreds if not thousands of your locally owned-newspapers appear to have been stolen from newsstands all across North Berkeley last week.

While I don’t always run out to get a copy as soon as they are issued on Thursday, I’m always able to find copies of your fine paper even as late as Tuesday, perhaps because there are so many of your newsstands in this part of town. Despite searching far and wide, I was unable to find even a single copy of your paper on Friday afternoon anywhere north of University Avenue. All the other papers were still in the news racks besides yours, so your missing papers weren’t the victim of a recycling heist. Clearly something you covered editorially was the reason for the wholesale thievery.

I was sent on this search because a friend of mine (a fellow former journalist) called me to insist that I read your front page story on the three local, First-Amendment-hating Zionists/Neo-Cons, who have made it their life’s work to silence the divergent voices published in the Berkeley Planet. She was especially insistent that I get a copy immediately as she knew one of the people your thorough and excellent article exposed as a fascist hack.

As a former newspaper publisher I’m personally aware of the great damage caused by thieves who would hijack an entire edition of a newspaper in a vain attempt to silence a story. I had that crime committed against me several times when I was exposing the political corruption that was the hallmark of government in Emeryville in the 1980s. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. The sort of skulking criminals who would do such a thing have no honor, no integrity, no intellect, they are no more than modern ‘Brownshirts’ dedicated to insuring that “All opposition must be stamped into the ground!”

By the by, eventually I drove to your offices in south Berkeley to acquire a copy of the article and paper. The article was worth the effort it took for me to find, and I recommend that everyone read it carefully and note who among us in Berkeley would deliberately attempt to kill a newspaper, who would happily murder that which makes America a shining beacon in a world full of nationalists, theocrats, fascists, thugs and thieves.

Keep up the good work, continue to expose the truth.

Fred Dodsworth

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FLAWED BUT PRECIOUS

Editors, Daily Planet:

I usually disagree with Daily Planet Becky O’Malley’s editorial viewpoints. I think a bit of reporter bias too often seeps into the Daily Planet’s news stories. Yet, I believe the Berkeley Daily Planet is one of our town’s most precious resources.

It’s a resource in jeopardy, however, threatened by the tough economy and structural changes in the news business. Worse, because people really should behave themselves better, it’s being threatened by bullies like those exposed in last week’s package “The Campaign Against the Daily Planet.”

There are two reasons I hold the Daily Planet is such high regard. One is the paper’s commitment to covering local news. The other is its commitment to free speech.

My perceived bias of the Planet’s coverage does not bother me, because the paper is open to all points of view. Whether you’re pro-development or anti-development, whether you favor a particular tax hike or oppose it, whether you think Tom Bates is a fine mayor or the dumbest log in the pile, the Planet will print your point of view. The letters and commentaries rejected for publication are slim indeed, and from what I can tell, those being filtered out deserve that fate. (Again, see last week’s package.)

Without the Planet, the city government will be able to operate with greater secrecy and community debate on important issues will be stifled. Keeping the Planet alive keeps the debate alive and government more accountable.

I hope advertisers being bullied by those who don’t believe in free speech will have the stones to resist those tactics. I’d even urge new advertisers to step up to the plate and hawk your business in the Planet: the paper has a lot of dedicated readers, hence potential customers. To those who disagree with the paper’s stands, I suggest you contribute your own point of view and keep things smart and lively. Perhaps even make some donations.

Finally, to those rich folk in Berkeley whose net worth has remained sky high even in the midst of this Great Recession—why not make an investment in local news and free speech by becoming a significant benefactor of The Berkeley Daily Planet, and keep this endangered resource alive?

Russ Mitchell

(Russ Mitchell is a journalist who has worked on the staffs of Business Week, U.S. News & World Report, Business 2.0, Conde Nast Portfolio and other publications.)

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UNACCEPTABLE

Editors, Daily Planet:

I returned to my hometown of Berkeley two years ago. I have never been more moved to voice my thoughts on a local matter until seeing the article on the campaign against the Daily Planet. Growing up here I was surrounded by a rich diversity of opinions that cut across ethnic, religious and class lines. This empowered me to develop my own thoughts from an early age on local and global issues. I knew that whatever conclusions I reached I could walk down the streets of Berkeley and find someone to argue them with me. This type of open dialogue is a well-referenced quality of Berkeley and is also the fabric upon which democracy is built.

Despite my disposition to dialogue, I never voiced an opinion on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict before age 19. As the Planet article mentioned, a large percentage of people in Berkeley are Jewish and span the spectrum of stances on this important issue. I always felt that as a non-Jew it was not my issue to take on. It wasn’t until I moved away from Berkeley that I realized that in fact it was my duty as a global citizen to educate myself and develop an empirical perspective on this issue. The catalyst was the death of a fellow student at my college. She was run over by an Israeli bulldozer while protesting the demolition of a Palestinian doctors home. My first step was to take an in-depth historical class which rebuilt many assumptions I carried and enabled me to accurately build my understanding of how this conflict has come to be.

Years have passed and since moving back here I have always appreciated the Daily Planet for its in-depth coverage. In an era of media conglomeration it is precious to have a paper this committed to local news and open dialogue. The campaign against the Planet is one of bullying and censorship. This leads to ignorance and compliance, both backdrops of fascism. I applaud the Planet for standing up not only for itself but also for the first amendment and for open, local journalism everywhere. The men waging this campaign could choose to write letters or ask those in support of Israel to step up and get more published in the Planet. Instead, they have chosen to try and silence the whole paper. This is not acceptable. We are a city that understands the importance of open dialogue as a first step in coming to creative solutions for the issues of our time. I will not be intimidated and I support the Berkeley Daily Planet.

Kaytlyn O’Connor

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ANTI- AND PRO-SEMITISM

Editors, Daily Planet:

I have been following in these pages the backing and forth-ing between friends and foes of Israel. The vehemence is palpable. Neutral positions have appeared from time to time only to be outshouted and dismissed.

Have you ever tried to break up a dog fight? I have, and I can assure you of two things: you can’t stop it and watching is very boring.

I’m writing to try to break up this dog fight between The Daily Planet and those who deny its right to exist. I probably will not succeed any better than I did when as a boy my dog and the neighbor’s had a fight. But the Planet is a friend and you know how it is when your friend is under attack.

First, this war of words without regard to where it takes place is asymmetric. One side hurls “anti-Semitism” and the other replies, “anti-Palestinianism” or “anti-Islamism” but only the first epithet sticks. Remember that although the bigger dog can cause more hurt, it seldom succeeds in destroying its smaller opponent.

Dogs don’t use words whereas words are essential and necessary instruments in human fights. My intervention is an appeal to both sides to focus attention on the most explosive word in this fight, “anti-Semitism.” It can be disarmed with proper analysis.

Every time the suffix “ism” is attached to a noun it creates an abstract category that is vague, pejorative, doctrinaire and super-charged for controversy. Notice, for example, how “terror” and “social” are irremediably corrupted when appended with the insidious suffix “ism”. Not only are they devoid of force but the meaning of terrorism and socialism changes with context and user.

Finally, bear in mind that the offending word is formed from “Semite” the adjectival form of which refers to the overlapping of origins, customs and cultures of half a dozen peoples, some extinct like the Phoenicians and some not extinct like the Ethiopians and the Hebrews.

So, anti-Palistinians and anti-Islamists (and you too, anti BDP-ists) keep on hurling “anti-Semitism,” a wet noodle at best but belay the sticks and stones.

Tuesday night the City Council, led by Councilmember Maio and Mayor Bates, adopted guidance for staff to craft a Downtown Area Plan that will open the downtown up to the hugest extensive expansion, both up to the sky (and a bit beyond), and outward into the neighborhoods, in the city’s history. The plan, proposed by Councilmember Maio (District 1), creates incentives for two 225-foot (20-story-plus) hotels and a 180-foot office or residential structure, and extends the downtown area buildable to 85 feet to Dwight to the south, MLK to the west, and north to Hearst. UC, which isn’t technically bound by the city’s zoning, has always agreed to adhere to the city’s zoning limits in principle, and by this plan will be free to build any additional buildings that fit those general guidelines (that is, hotels to 225 feet and office or residential buildings to 180 feet.)

More than two years ago, the council, amid much fanfare and self-congratulation, established the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission (DAPAC), whose 21 members were charged with finding consensus on the downtown’s future. The commission spent two years hashing out exactly that asked-for consensus, hammering together a broad compromise that doubled the size of the largest permissible buildings to 10 stories, as well as separately allowing for two 22-story hotels. That compromise plan, accepted by 17 of the 21 members, was ignored by the council, to the dismay of the citizen-advocate minority, Councilmembers Arreguin (Dist. 4), Anderson (Dist. 3), and councilmember Worthington District 7 .

Why does the council insist that we need to remake our downtown in the image of a huge metropolis, and surrender all but a perfunctory nod to our beautiful, sustainable neo-classical and art-deco architectural context? They claim that we need dramatic incentives to convince developers to build sustainable housing, and they do so on the basis of a feasibility study based on construction costs and housing prices from the height of the boom. (A similar such feasibility study 13 years ago established conclusively that no grocery store could stand a chance of surviving at the present Berkeley Bowl site down Shattuck.) It doesn’t matter: these are not the real reasons.

The council needs money. Seven years ago, political factions on the council competed to see who could grant city employees more extravagant pay raises and pension hikes, in the mistaken belief that the upcoming election would hang in some way on the support of our employees. That decision has had drastic consequences, including swiftly stripping us of a huge number of our most experienced employees, and leading directly to the cost-saving Friday city-office closings. The 12 percent hotel tax is the fastest lane on the road to pseudo-solvency.

More importantly, Maio and Bates are in debt to downtown property interests. Bates has worked hard to help UC expand massively into the downtown. He led the council in a suit against UC that in essence preempted private suits, and then settled that suit precipitously in a matter dramatically favorable to the university. Had he let the suit run its course, subsequent case law would have required a settlement massively in the city’s favor.

DAPAC members, who argued ferociously for the council to at least consider their plan, were utterly dismayed, not only by the council’s litany of excesses, but by the way they were used to create the impression that the council sincerely sought guidance from its citizens.

Something has gone terribly wrong in the city. Our council pays consistent lip service to sustainability, progressive politics, and residential quality of life, but when they act, serve only the interests of powerful developers and property owners. In the Obama age, when Berkeley of all cities should come into its own as an iconic example of government that exists for the benefit of its citizens, we are instead ruled by councilmembers devoted to the usual power brokers that quietly run most small towns. I don’t know how we let it happen; I do know that it’s time to put an end to it. This frightful decision in particular must not stand.

Dave Blake is a former chair of the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board.

As of late I have read a number of articles regarding the expenses for the Graduation of Berkeley High School at the UC Hearst Greek Theater. With over 30 years of experience (1974-2005) assisting, producing and directing the production of the graduation at the Greek Theater, I believe I can speak with some authority.

Please do the math. Let’s assume there are presently 870 persons that will graduate this June. Using the present criteria of providing two tickets free to each graduate, the total number of free tickets would be 1,740. Subtract that amount from the total capacity of the Greek Theater which is stated to be 8,500 leaving 6,760 available tickets. Let's assume, and we must make assumptions as a course of practice, that approximately 4,500 tickets will be sold at $15 totaling $67,500 (2.58 tickets per family sold). Now let’s make some expense assumption (I do have some experience is this area):

The decision to use the Greek Theater was initially made in 1967 I believe. It was at that time the school district changed from two graduation ceremonies to one, combining the fall and spring graduations. The fall class traditionally graduating in January and the spring class graduating in June. By separating the class into two parts, the use of the Community Theater was sufficient as the capacity of the theater was at that time 3,497. By having one ceremony or as tradition defines it, commencement exercise, a facility needed to be located to accommodate a larger capacity for the family attending the graduation. Thus the Greek Theater was chosen.

In prior years the university provided to the school district the use of the Greek Theater gratis. As the district’s use of the Greek Theater continued, the cost of use increased. The university continued to provide monetary support by providing the Greek Theater at cost less 50 percent meaning the university provided the Greek Theater to BUSD for $3,000 instead of $6,000 (an amount negociated between myself and the vice chancellor).

If memory serves me correctly, in or about 1985 the university informed the district of the need to charge for UC staff overtime (UC police), the cost approximately $8,000. The district, not the high school, paid for the overtime. Some years later, invoices for overtime were not paid by the district and the past amounts were due (totaling over $16,000 at the time). Not having the funds to pay the outstanding invoices and the district refusing to pay stating the expense was not a district responsibility but that of the high school, the decision was made to charge a minimal fee for attending graduation. A fee of $5 was agreed upon for tickets exceeding the free number of 10 per family. Thus 3,500 tickets would be sold at $5 (a total of $17,500) to help cover the cost of graduation. Five thousand free tickets and 3,500 sold for a total of 8,500 tickets. The graduating classes were averaging approximately 1,000.

So if a like criteria were used, as defined by the principal, two free tickets are being offered to the graduates for an approximate total of 1,740 there should be 6,760 available at $15 each totaling a possible $101,400. That generates an approximate profit of $55,400. Of course these numbers are assumptions as I have stated. I do not believe the cost of graduation has increased from approximately $26,000 in 2005 to over $100,000 in 2009. Do you? Do the math and follow the money. Usually leads one to the truth. In addition, where is the money from prior graduation ticket sales? Someone should ask and demand accountability. Rules, regulations and law dictate the use of student body funds which in my opinion the sale of tickets to a graduation is an expense associated with the student body. In the words of the principal, “this is what the student body officers voted for.” According to the April 30 issue of the Daily Planet, the cost of graduation last year was approximately $29,000.

Judson H. Owens is a former general services manager for Berkeley Unified School District and a parent of a graduating senior.

Nine years ago, Medi-Cal saved my life. I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and could not pay for my care. Medi-Cal covered two surgeries, two hospital overnights, two diagnostic outpatient visits, an examination and consultation with a prominent oncologist, and the coordinative work and monitoring laboratory work of my primary care provider, who was proactive throughout the experience. My surgeon operated twice, because the foci of cancer in the second lobe were submicroscopic at the time of the first surgery, and he concluded from the slides he examined microscopically that this lobe was healthy. It is good surgical practice not to perform a complete thyroidectomy, when one lobe can remain and do the work of both. When, months later, the foci of carcinoma in the remaining lobe became microscopic, it was clear that this lobe, too, needed to be removed. I asked this well-thought-of young surgeon what motivated him to do such conscientious work for such a low rate of reimbursement under Medi-Cal, and he said, “ love.” Those were the high and palmy days of Medi-Cal, when increasing numbers of specialists were not taking Medi-Cal patients but the perception was, still, that the best doctors considered such a denial of service unconscionable.

In the course of the Bush II years, Medi-Cal has fallen on evil days. Medi-Cal recipients are finding it terminally difficult to find doctors—specialists or primary care providers—to treat them; and in the medical profession and in the media, Medi-Cal is increasingly viewed as an encumbrance. The State of California proposes to cut the program in two areas: 10 percent deducted in reimbursement to providers, and the exclusion from coverage of “optional” categories of medical treatment. (A third way of shrinking the Medi-Cal footprint, that of tightening the eligibility criteria, was floated in a May 14 story in the San Francisco Chronicle, but it is doubtful that the means testing can be made more stringent than it is already, if applicants for the program are to be allowed enough income and resources to afford basic necessities.)

Cutting 10 percent in Medi-Cal reimbursement, when this figure now ranks 42nd among Medicaid payments among the states, would hasten the flight of doctors and other health professionals, and cripple pharmacies, diagnostic laboratories and public hospitals. Perhaps the situation for pharmacies is most ominous. Many small independent pharmacies rely on their Medi-Cal compensation and, unable to make ends meet, would have to go out of business. To wipe out the skillful dispensation of medications would affect more Californians than solely the very poor on Medi-Cal. It would hollow out our staple idea that people should dutifully stay on their medications.

It should be considered that tooth decay can be mortal if it enters the bloodstream. And a biennial optician’s examination, normally covered by Medi-Cal, is the only chance most people get to be screened for glaucoma, retinitis or macular degeneration. Thus the distinction between “optional” and essential does not make medical sense. We are told that the federal governmant views the above categories as optional. Who decided that? Someone in the Bush administration?

It should come as good news, for those who have a partiality for agitation, that more than mere hand-wringing has taken place in the community of those who deplore the cuts.

In April 2008, the Gray Panthers of San Francisco, in a coalition of various groups, successfully sued the state in federal court to block the provider cuts. The ruling was appealed by the state in a hearing on February 18 of this year. The Panthers’ attorney, Lynn S. Carman of the Medicaid Defense Fund, argued on the basis of foundational “War on Poverty” legislation that for a state to run a poverty health program, the program must measure up to federal health standards, and that further emasculation of Medi-Cal would render it dysfunctional. The state’s defense was “States’ Rights.” The appeals court has yet to issue a ruling on that issue. The appeal process may reach the U. S. Supreme Court. So we have the Gray Panthers to thank that, in the words of a Chronicle writer on May14, the intention of cutting payment to providers is “mired in a lawsuit.” As regards the cuts in “optional” treatments, the Gray Panthers have filed a preliminary restraining order in a separate but complementary suit on a different legal basis. The state argues that the $10 billion in stimulus money it was expecting for July 1, 2010 will come to only $6.5 billion, and the shortfall will “trigger” the cuts in “optional” services. But the Panthers’ argument is 1) need and 2) that in the terms of the ARRA bill it is illegal to accept federal stimulus money while cutting ongoing education, health, or social services on the state or local level.

My escape nine years ago from a slow, quiet and below-the-radar death has acquired for me visionary American themes. To be deprived of the triad of rights in The Declaration of Independence, to fail of protection from the cruel and all too usual punishment for being poor; to come short of equal treatment under the law: all these themes call up the immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the effect that “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” But with the Medi-Cal cuts poised to affect so many numbers of Californians, even if indirectly, we are no longer talking about inequality. We are all sadly coupled, ridden by the Social Darwinism that weeds the weak and lets predators take them out. This is in accord with brute nature, perhaps, but inhumane. Let us not try to accept the unacceptable. Let us insist on health justice for all our citizens.

Anne Richardson is an East Bay Medicare and Medi-Cal recipient and a member of the San Francisco Gray Panthers.

Preliminary hearing were resumed today (June 2) at the Alameda County Courthouse for Johannes Mehserle, the Bart police officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant, Jan. 1, 2009. And I was up at 6:30 this morning preparing to leave and get to the courthouse by 7:30, even though, I live only 10 walking minutes away from it. But the courtroom has seating for only 27 people. So, getting there early to stand in line is part of the ritual of doing one’s civic duty to support the implementation of justice.

When I arrived at the courthouse at 7:40, the line was not as long as I had expected. So, I anticipated actually entering the courtroom and witnessing the proceedings. But from 7:40 until the doors opened at 9, I became aware of how the courtroom situation replicates the forced scarcity we experience daily in our country. And I watched a few people in line respond to that lack with the same preferential behavior and dismissive attitudes used to get us through our regular dog eat dog circumstances.

Those who exercised selective privilege for places in line did so, seemingly, without any consciousness of the disrespect their behavior carried or its implications for other situations. One young woman tried to resist when those further along in the line pulled her in front of others to be with them. She and I had been talking about social construction as we stood together, and I empathized with her as she was held, looking back at us, because I knew that she realized all that I am now saying was wrong with that move. The sheriffs let people enter in groups of fives, and I was fourth in line when they called the last group. As I was about to step forward, another older woman pushed ahead of me. That was it; the last to go in was a group of four.

Surely, there are larger courtrooms in that building. Why have we not advocated to have the hearings located were we could, in larger numbers, exercise our right and responsibility to witness the trial? A high profile case such as this one being held in such a small courtroom seems to be a way of denying the public the right to attend. I know that we have been traumatized by the loss of our young brother by oppressive power, and that there is much to do to insure that justice is carried out. But it seems that demanding a larger courtroom is an important part of that work.

Most important, it is necessary for us to check in with ourselves relative to ethical practice, and be models of it for ourselves, and for each other in our small as well as in our large areas of interaction. Small acts can produce huge consequences. After all, it was only a small gesture of a few seconds that ended the life we now grieve and are seeking to honor with justice. We must practice fairness among ourselves to support the ethical foundation and solidarity from which we calling for justice. Yes, I was disappointed that the woman jumped ahead and prevented me from witnessing the trial. But after I thought about it, I felt really good about letting it go, and realizing that it was an instance of our collective way of being that needs addressing personally and collectively.

Bisola Marignay is an Oakland writer and artist and is actively engaged in supporting justice for Oscar Grant.

Gov. Schwarzenegger’s freeze of the Cal Grant, the state’s primary college financial aid program for low-income students, and his plan to eliminate it in its entirety is both short-sighted and cruel. It backtracks on the promise to make higher education available to all eligible students. Republicans who have signed a pledge to never raise taxes are in fact cynically taxing those who can least afford it, low income students, by increasing fees and rescinding grants.

As the college advisor at a large urban high school, I see every day the hard work, courage and determination students have put in to reach their goal of going to college. Many will be the first in their family to attend. This has meant long hours working to contribute to family expenses while keeping up with homework, rising early to take younger siblings to school or day care, foregoing high school extracurricular activities to take care of siblings after school, and finding ways to get help with their studies because they cannot afford tutoring help and their parents cannot help them because they have not completed high school. For some it has meant learning a new language while completing college entrance requirements. The promise of attending college has kept many going.

The freeze on Cal Grants goes into effect now, meaning that students in the class of 2009 who have been awarded the grant are having it taken away. More than 118,000 high school students from low income families have made their decisions on which college to attend based on promises of receiving a Cal Grant. Now they must each scramble to find thousands of dollars to fill the gap left by this loss. Many have paid housing deposits and other fees and applied for the maximum amount of loans available. At this late date, their choices are few. Tens of thousands may choose to attend a California community college instead, only to find that due to budget cuts there and greatly increased enrollment, the classes they need are already full.

Beyond each personal tragedy is the impact this will have on California’s economy in the long-term. To be competitive on the world market, California needs educated, skilled workers. Denying tens of thousands of students a higher education every year will lead to higher unemployment, which will put additional pressure on the state budget and further erode the quality of life.

Cal State trustee William Hauck stated earlier this year that graduating fewer students from the Cal States will mean that many people who are needed in the workforce will not be there. Trustee Herb Carter, added, “For every dollar that is spent on a student in higher education in this state in the CSU, we give back to the state something in the neighborhood of $4.75. This is not charity for students; this is in the best interest of the state of California.”

The state’s philosophy has moved from seeing education as a public good (for the future of society and the economy) to regarding it as a private benefit to be purchased in the marketplace, available only to those who can pay for it. What will happen to those adults who do not have the opportunity to get the education they need to find a fulfilling job to support themselves and their families? Our priorities are completely wrong if the state continues to find money for prisons and not for the education needed for our children.

We must urge the state Legislature and the governor to rethink this short-sighted proposal to end the Cal Grant program and reinstate it in full.

Ilene Abrams is writing on behalf of the Berkeley High School Counseling Department.

In 1996, California mandated that insurance cover anorexia and bulimia, but excluded Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS). This policy should change to include EDNOS coverage, as the current information readily available about EDNOS invalidates the original policy’s oversights.

EDNOS is the psychiatric disorder with the highest mortality rate. The most common EDNOS patient exhibits anorexic and/or bulimic behaviors but gets her period or seems to be of an “average healthy weight.”

I know the illness well because my best friend has it.

She sustains the same perfection over her body as she does in her Ivy-League studies. At night you can hear her painful forced vomits; during the day she exercises for at least four hours. She once confided that she thought about food 80 percent of the day and took Benadryl to sleep away the torment.

She meets all the criteria for anorexia—except she gets menstrual cycles. This one difference classifies her as having EDNOS. It also rejects her from receiving insurance-covered treatment.

In 1996, Congress may have not considered EDNOS a serious threat due to the relatively low number of Americans suffering from EDNOS and the lack of concrete familiarity with the disorder. However, both of these oversights are now known to be false. Even though the physical signs of EDNOS are not as recognizable as traditional anorexia or bulimia, it is known now that patients suffering from EDNOS face the same fate as anorexic and bulimic people: they die every year, and half meet the criteria for depression.

In 2008, half of those struggling with eating disorders were diagnosed with EDNOS. According to the Health Education Department’s national survey for college students, the number of people diagnosed with EDNOS has doubled from 8.2 percent in 1995 to 17 percent in 2008.

People may attribute this increase the entertainment industry’s glorification of unhealthy female body images, ultra-thin fashion models and the surge in eating disorder websites. However, governmental restriction on the media is not a feasible option. There are so many sects of the media that making one sweeping law would be difficult. Additionally, the vastness of the Internet makes it next to impossible to deter someone who seeks information. Courts are also reluctant to allow any exceptions to the First Amendment freedom of speech.

Results must come through policy change. As you read this, there are EDNOS patients who have found the courage to seek treatment, yet are being denied under an outdated policy created more than ten years ago. This is unacceptable. The difference of one single criterion should not deny such a large group of Americans treatment coverage. EDNOS is non-discriminatory: it affects people of all socioeconomic statuses, races, sexes and education levels, even someone with an ivy league education like my best friend. EDNOS affects such a wide spectrum of Americans that politicians have a duty to advocate on behalf of this steadily rising population.

It was only in 2008, after a twelve-year struggle led by Ted Kennedy, that the Senate passed a bill mandating wider insurance coverage for mental illness treatment. The fact that it took this long even for a politician who had no fears of losing an election and had a personal connection through his son’s manic depression, testaments to the pervading stigma our American society has towards mental illness.

We cannot afford to wait this long again for EDNOS patients. Hundreds of lives are at stake. If politicians recognized that it was necessary to insure anorexic and bulimic people, then it is illogical that those who face the same daily torment and possibility of death do not receive the same coverage.

As a resident of South Berkeley I am outraged that the Berkeley Police Department claims its recent high-speed police pursuits were “by the book.” Just weeks ago, two innocent people were killed as a result of BPD engaging in a high-speed chase down heavily populated neighborhood streets into a major corridor. This is not unprecedented; it is increasing. Our community has been victimized by these tactics numerous times over many years. It needs to stop.

This past Tuesday, about 10 police cars chased a suspect driving fast from West Berkeley to South Berkeley and caused chaos at the corner of Shattuck and Ashby, a major intersection, when the suspect crashed into a parked car and fled on foot. BPD cordoned off my neighborhood and re-directed all southbound Shattuck traffic down my tiny one-block-long street. We assumed there was an accident and had no idea that an armed and dangerous suspect was on the loose. My small child was playing in our backyard. We were put at extreme risk under seige for nearly three hours and BPD took insufficient action to alert us.

BPD claims in the media that it informed all of us in the cordoned-off area by phone what was going on. We got nothing more than an indescipherable phone message about a hour after this started that I could not tell was from the BPD. The only way I know it was the BPD is because we got a similar message hours later that included only a garbled “Berkeley Police Department” and “all clear.” I learned from the Berkeley Daily Planet’s news flash what was going on. Thanks to the Planet I learned that there were police dogs and a SWAT team out there, armed and dangerous. How many resources were put to use? Not one BPD officer came down our street to tell us anything or to stay inside. Cars crashed on my street. There were hundreds of them backed up at rush hour due to the BPD’s actions.

I have not been able to locate the department’s current high-speed chase policy “BPD General Order V-6.” Police Review Commission minutes from July 2007 state: “There is a new general order V-6. This policy is intended to reduce potential hazards to the public and to pursuing officers generated by police pursuits of fleeing suspects while maximizing the opportunity for apprehension.” In 2003, the Police Review Commission sent a memo to the City Council recommending that its policy be touted as a model to the state governor and legislature. It excerpted significant parts of the 1997 V-6, including:

During a pursuit these factors and conditions should be continually weighed by the primary unit and/or the pursuit supervisor: the seriousness of the original crime; the danger posed to the community by the fleeing motorist; the safety of the pursuing officers; the speeds involved in the pursuit; the volume of vehicle and pedestrian traffic in the area of the pursuit; the safety of the public in the area where the pursuits are moving (i.e., schools, parks, hospitals, commercial district); pursuit units familiarity with the surrounding area; the quality of radio transmissions between pursuing units, the Control dispatcher, and the Pursuit Supervisor; weather conditions; road conditions; time of day.

BPD’s actions in these two incidents—and others—are hardly by the book. Clearly, if cops cannot readily apprehend suspects firing at car windows and tires, which is what happened last Tuesday, they should not chase them across Berkeley into residential neighborhoods, down major corridors, or near schools that had to be locked down. BPD needs to be reminded that tragedy resulted from the incident the other week. The risks to the community outweigh the benefits of immediate apprehension in these situations.

Brian Edwards-Tiekert starts his reply to my original commentary (May 14) by calling me “delusional,” after saying he is not prone to hyperbole, which he then uses throughout his reply.

My commentary was not a “rambling attack” as he calls it, but a fact based political criticism. Something Brian and his folks can’t handle.

On several occasions over the years I have challenged Brian and any of his allies to publicly debate these issues and many other Pacifica/KPFA issues and they have never been willing to step up before the listeners when they can be exposed. It is so ironic that they claim to be the standard bearers for our “Free Speech” station and continually refuse to expose their real views and practices to our listeners!

The main point of my criticism was that the Concerned Listener faction, previously KPFAForward, which Brian admits he endorsed and he meets with regularly, elected William Walker, Sarv Randhawa, Rosalinda Palacios, Mary Berg, Sherry Gendelman, Bonnie Simmons and Andrea Turner to the Pacifica National Board (PNB) and that all of these folks colluded with the previous majority at WBAI and the majority at WPFW to block any financial responsibility at WBAI for the previous several years. During those years WBAI was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year which required loans from KPFA and put Pacifica near bankruptcy. The quid pro quo was that the colluder-controlled PNB would not interfere with the tyrannical practices that the majorities at KPFA and WPFW were practicing at their stations, in violation of the bylaws and progressive principles of transparency, due process and fair elections. In his reply Brian does not deny this fact.

I also made the point that the members of this collusion, which included the Concerned Listener/KPFAForward elected PNB members, fought against transparency to hide from the listener/subscribers what they were doing. In his reply Brian did not deny this fact.

I also pointed out that the colluders voted down a motion that was passed by the PNB Election Committee 10-2 that would have required election information and candidate statements and debates on the air during elections. This seems like a simple idea for an educated electorate. They voted it down since the Concerned Listener/KPFA management faction didn’t want the voters to hear about the issues. And as part of their strategy the Concerned Listener slate sent a slate mailer to the voters timed to arrive just after the ballots arrived while there was no election candidate information or debates on the air for weeks. In his reply Brian did not deny this fact.

How do I know these things to be true? I wrote the Election Committee motion that the Concerned Listeners rallied their colluder allies to defeat, in order to keep the electorate ignorant, and I was part of the team along with La Varn Williams who fought for transparency during those years. I wrote an 11-page legal/historical analysis of that struggle and will gladly e-mail it to anyone who would like a copy. Contact me at PhelpsMediation@aol.com.

Why didn’t Brian deny any of the basic facts asserted in my original article and instead tried to get people to look at other issues? The answer is simple. The collusion was real and it continues today, except that they now don’t have a majority on the PNB and thus there will be election information on the air for the upcoming election and steps are being taken to stop the red ink at WBAI.

Richard Phelps is a former chair of the KPFA Local Station Board and a former member of the PNB Election and Governance Committees.

Columns

America’s economic health continues to be marginal. While the Obama administration suggests the worst is behind us and mentions signs of economic progress, unemployment remains high and businesses continue to close. How can we tell if we are at the bottom of the economic decline? And what should we expect over the next 12 months?

There’s a famous metaphor where several observers glimpse a passing circus parade through knotholes in a wooden fence. Each sees something different: one observer sees an elephant, while another sees a clown. That’s the way Americans experience this recession. A laid-off GM worker or Citicorp employee views the economy differently than does a retired UC professor.

Because the 2009 U.S. economy feels like the aftermath of a horrendous auto accident, a more apt analogy is the medical triage process. Recession casualties are being sorted according to degree of urgency and the most grievous wounds are being attended to first.

When he became president, Barack Obama found the economy flat on its back, hemorrhaging from multiple lacerations. Five months later, these lesions have been bandaged and the bleeding has stopped. Nonetheless, there were severe internal injuries and the United States requires further medical attention.

The financial industry suffered a head wound and went into intensive care. Fortunately, its condition stabilized and some central nervous system functions have reappeared; there’s not the fear of a total meltdown that many expected after the collapse of Lehman brothers. No other major financial institutions have failed although several—AIG, Bank of America, Citicorp, and Wells Fargo—needed massive federal transfusions to survive. While there are positive vital signs—the LIBOR rate is down and many banks offer attractive refinance terms—commercial lending remains weak.

Many banks labor with huge inventories of bad residential and commercial loans. As a result the real estate market is mixed. On the one hand, sales of previously owned homes are up. On the other hand, foreclosure rates are high, as are the total number of mortgage delinquencies.

The economy is contracting. Because of the real estate mortgage crisis the finance and construction sectors of the economy are diminishing. With the exception of the Federal government, much of American industry is on bed rest. Reduced capital investment has decreased demand for goods and services and, therefore, for the workers that provide them.

While the economy continues to receive transfusions and its medical prognosis is unclear, Americans are hopeful. Consumer confidence has increased and Obama continues to have strong support. Some of this optimism is warranted, as most economists believe the recession is at or near the bottom. Nonetheless, there’s not agreement about what actions to take next and whether the “patient” will recover rapidly or instead stay in the hospital for a series of medical procedures.

Recent recessions have been relatively short-lived because Americans kept spending. That’s not the case in 2009. The public is in shock and, as a result, Americans are holding onto their money. Only federal spending is growing. As stimulus-funded public works programs kick in—for example, for new high-speed rail initiatives—they will create jobs and spur investment.

The state of the economy—severe injuries coupled with post-traumatic-stress disorder—suggests that recovery will be slow. After severe trauma some patients initially get better, then suffer from secondary maladies. For example, surgery patients get staph infections or suffer side effects from the strong medication they are given. In order to fund the stimulus package and bail out financial institutions, the Obama administration has substantially increased the deficit. If this action does not produce a quick economic recovery, it may be counter-productive because interest rates will rise.

Thus, there is a window for the administration’s actions to have optimal impact. Most economist feel the economy must be in positive recovery mode by the end of the year and performing well in mid-2010.

The recovery must have three parts. First, Americans have to increase their demand for goods and services. Second, the United States must take concrete steps to improve its productivity, for example, by reducing healthcare costs and decreasing the costs of goods sold by lowering fuel costs. Finally, there needs to be a new American technical frontier, an area where American entrepreneurs sense opportunity, a sector that generates excitement.

Clean energy technology appears to be the leading candidate for the needed breakthrough. Next year promises to be the year of the electric car, the year where millions of Americans choose to plug in rather than fuel up. And during the next eighteen months billions of dollars will be expended on wind and solar systems and billions more on weatherization and energy management systems.

So far, President Obama has successfully engaged in triage economics, but the patient remains in guarded condition. In the next twelve months, the administration has to get the economy out of the hospital and on the road to a full recovery.

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net.

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been subjected to various conservative commentators and Republican officials charge United States Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with “racism” because Ms. Sotomayor indicated that all things being equal, a Latina woman judge might be better able to rule on a sex-race discrimination case than a white male judge.

As Inigo Montoya said to Vizzini in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word [meaning “racism,” in this case]. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

So as a reminder for my many conservative friends, I thought for this column, I might simply reproduce some quotations out of United States history that showed what racism in speech and writing actually was and is, in the event they had forgotten:

A People Not Fit to Govern

Themselves

“The condition of slavery with us is, in a word, Mr. President, nothing but the form of civil government instituted for a class of people not fit to govern themselves. It is exactly what in every State exists in some form or other. It is just that kind of control which is extended in every northern State over its convicts, its lunatics, its minors, its apprentices. It is but a form of civil government for those who by their nature are not fit to govern themselves. We recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race of men by the Creator, and from the cradle to the grave, our Government, as a civil institution, marks that inferiority.”

United States Senator Jefferson C. Davis (Mississippi)

Former U.S. Secretary of War and later the first and only President of the

Confederate States of America

Senate Chamber, U.S. Capitol,

Feb. 29, 1860

The Right of the Negro to Govern White Men

“[The Senator from Wisconsin] said we had taken [the] rights [of negroes] away from them. He asked me was it right to murder them in order to carry the elections. I never saw one murdered. I never saw one shot at an election. It was the riots before the elections precipitated by their own hot-headedness in attempting to hold the government, that brought on conflicts between the races and caused the shotgun to be used. That is what I meant by saying we used the shotgun.

“I want to ask the Senator this proposition in arithmetic: In my State [during the 1870’s] there were 135,000 negro voters, or negroes of voting age, and some 90,000 or 95,000 white voters. General Canby set up a carpetbag government there and turned our State over to this majority. Now, I want to ask you, with a free vote and a fair count, how are you going to beat 135,000 by 95,000? How are you going to do it? You had set us an impossible task.

"Mr. President, I have not the facts and figures here, but I want the country to get the full view of the Southern side of this question and the justification for anything we did. We were sorry we had the necessity forced upon us, but we could not help it, and as white men we are not sorry for it, and we do not propose to apologize for anything we have done in connection with it. We took the government away from them in 1876.

“We did not disfranchise the negroes until 1895. Then we had a constitutional convention convened which took the matter up calmly, deliberately, and avowedly with the purpose of disfranchising as many of them as we could under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. We adopted the educational qualification as the only means left to us, and the negro is as contented and as prosperous and as well protected in South Carolina to-day as in any State of the Union south of the Potomac. He is not meddling with politics, for he found that the more he meddled with them the worse off he got. As to his “rights"-I will not discuss them now. We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be equal to the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him. I would to God the last one of them was in Africa and that none of them had ever been brought to our shores. But I will not pursue the subject further.”

United States Senator Ben Tillman (South Carolina)

Speech to the United States Senate

March 23, 1900

Slavery Is a Good

“But let me not be understood as admitting, even by implication, that the existing relations between the two races in the slaveholding States is an evil-far otherwise; I hold it to be a good, as it has thus far proved itself to be to both, and will continue to prove so if not disturbed by the fell spirit of abolition. I appeal to facts. Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually. It came among us in a low, degraded, and savage condition, and in the course of a few generations it has grown up under the fostering care of our institutions, as reviled as they have been, to its present comparatively civilized condition. This, with the rapid increase of numbers, is conclusive proof of the general happiness of the race, in spite of all the exaggerated tales to the contrary.”

United States Senator John C. Calhoun

Later Vice President of the United States

Speech on the Reception of Abolition Petitions 6 Feb 1837

The Nature of the Negro, and the Difference Between Whites and Blacks

“The first difference [between whites and blacks] which strikes us is that of colour. … And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oran-gutan for the black women over those of his own species. The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man?

“Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. [Blacks] have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour.

“They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning.

“They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them.

“In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.

“[N]ever yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. … Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination.”

Thomas Jefferson

Author of the Declaration of Independence, Governor of Virginia, President and Vice President of the United States

Writing in his book Notes On The State Of Virginia, 1781

And, finally, and perhaps most appropriately for the current discussion of the views of Ms. Sotomayor:

The Negro Has No Rights

“In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument.

“They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics which no one thought of disputing or supposed to be open to dispute, and men in every grade and position in society daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern, without doubting for a moment the correctness of this opinion.”

Only ignorance! only ignorance? How can you talk about only ignorance Don’t you know that it is the is the worst thing in the world, next to wickedness?—and which does the most mischief heaven only knows.”

We all have our literary influences, and one of my earliest outside Mad magazine was Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. The above was uttered by John Manly when a new groom had sickened the horse (that rarest of equine breeds, the Three-Gaited First-Person Narrator) by giving him cold water when he was still “hot” from a long run. I must’ve been a geek from birth; that sentiment rang all my chimes.

As we all remember being ignorant of something once upon a time (and when we’re being wise also remember that we still are) it’s sometimes hard to deal with. Anger followed by empathy followed by more anger, usually. And then wondering if we’d even trust the perpetrator to help clean up the mess.

Ignorance and well-intentioned energy can make a particularly toxic concoction. When Joe and I volunteered for a few years at a garden in Berkeley, the bane of our existence wasn’t hard work, the failing irrigation system, or the ivy that threatened to devour the neighborhood. It was the repeated loss of plants to the next wave of volunteers.

Recently a well-equipped and energetic crew of volunteers from a local corporation spent Earth Day “weeding”-ripping out-yet another butterfly garden in south Berkeley, not far from the vandalized traffic circle I wrote about two weeks ago.

They tore out most of the low-growing host plants and nectar plants around the schoolyard. Armed with power trimmers, surely a tool of the Devil, they trimmed several tall fennel clusters into poodleballs. This would have been witty except that it also destroyed all the anise swallowtail eggs that had been laid there on the outer tips of the foliage.

Then they neatened the place up with a nice thick fragrant mulch of cedar chips, the traditional moth repellant.

If you’re now in a wicked mood (as I am), you’ve timed it well. Amy Stewart (author of The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievments of Earthworms; From the Ground Up; and Flower Confidential) has written a bit of fun summer reading, Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln’s Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities.

This isn’t a technical manual; you won’t learn how to poison some deserving individual. You will learn that lots of common plants are toxic in interesting ways, or personally obnoxious, or destructive to the rest of the world. There are a few familiar villains, like the locally common weed poison hemlock, which some folks seem to think is a native or at least something suitable for children to frolic in. It looks like Queen Anne’s lace, or maybe parsley (they’re all relatives) but has purple blotches on its stems. It’s the stuff that killed Socrates.

Stewart will be reading and signing her book at Mrs. Dalloway’s on Friday June 19, at 7:30 PM. Come and meet her; she’s a kick in person too.

Now a private residence, this log cabin was Fawnskin’s first post office.

Each September, the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, New York, holds a rustic furniture fair featuring “unique interpretations of rustic found in handcrafted furniture, furnishings, and fine art.” The Adirondacks are widely considered to be the fount of rustic style, which found expression across North America, including the San Jacinto and San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California.

The first European inhabitants of most scenic mountain areas on either coast were those who sought to exploit their timber and mining resources. Later came land promoters who lured vacationers by providing ready access via trains and roads. Unlike the Adirondack Park—the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous United States, created in 1892 by the State of New York to remain “forever wild”—Southern California’s scenic mountains are administered by a patchwork of federal and state agencies, Indian reservations, and private entities.

The resort communities in the San Jacinto and San Bernardino Mountains had their beginnings in the late 19th century. An 1890s promotional brochure for the Bear Valley Resort in Pine Lake (now Big Bear Lake) was illustrated with rustic log cabins nestling at the foot of towering pine trees. In 1912, the resort became known as Pine Knot Lodge. Was the name derived from the first Adirondack Great Camp, William West Durant’s Camp Pine Knot on Raquette Lake?

Begun in 1877 and completed 13 years later, Camp Pine Knot set the tone for the Adirondack Rustic style: log construction, native stone work, and decorative work in twigs, branches, and bark.

Once owned by the likes of Collis P. Huntington, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Margaret Emerson Vanderbilt, the Adirondack Great Camps are multi-building complexes. Their counterparts in Southern California are far more modest, usually consisting of a single house. Nevertheless, the chief elements are all there: logs (often with the bark left on) or shingle exteriors; river rock chimneys; twigs and branches in balcony railings and fences.

Not many of the old Southern California log houses are still standing. Some of the best examples are to be found in Idyllwild, in the San Jacinto Mountains. Reached via the Panoramic State Route 243 from Banning, this quiet village of 3,500 bills itself as “an oasis of sanity in Southern California.” Less than an hour away from Palm Springs, Idyllwild is a hiking and cultural center. From Humber Park at the northeastern edge of the village, many hikers climb the Devil’s Slide Trail to Tahquitz Peak, enjoying spectacular views of granite boulders, distant valleys and mountains, all softened by the abundant native flowers that make a showing in late May and June. Another native denizen, displaced in Berkeley by the Eastern Fox Squirrel, is the beautiful Western Gray Squirrel (Sciurus griseus).

Idyllwild’s first resort camp opened in 1890. In 1901, a sanatorium was built here for tuberculosis patients. Remodeled into a hotel and burnt down, it was rebuilt in 1905 as a resort. In 1917, the land was subdivided and sold as vacation lots. Some of the early homes built at that time may still be found on the banks of Strawberry Creek. One of those is the Eloc Lodge on River Drive. The former vacation home of the Cole family from Long Beach, it is constructed of unpeeled pine logs, its central feature being a sturdy chimney of smooth river rocks. The attic room in the front gable opens onto a balcony of rough sticks, buttressed by two branches. In front of the house, attached to an old Black Oak tree, a wooden sign bears the first stanza of Arthur Chapman’s famous poem, “Out Where The West Begins”: Out where the handclasp’s a little stronger, Out where the smile dwells a little longer, That’s where the West begins. Out where the sun is a little brighter, Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter, Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter, That’s where the West begins.

Behind Eloc Lodge is a more elaborate timber-and-stone house flanked by several accessory buildings, all built of logs or local rock. Houses such as these are often filled with local handcrafted furniture. The Silver Pines Lodge and Creekside Cabins across the driveway began its life in 1923 as a furniture workshop. In 1934, Charles “Selden” Belden, a photographer from Oberlin, OH, moved to the San Jacinto Mountains and began producing handmade furniture under the Pinecraft label. Pinecraft furniture is now deemed collectible, and examples of it may be seen in the Idyllwild Area Historical Society Museum, 54470 North Circle Drive. Built in the 1920s, this shingled cabin was the summer home of one family for nearly 80 years. Open on weekends, the museum provides an introduction to the varied history of the region from the early days of the Cahuilla Indians to the era of organized summer camps.

A couple of blocks east of the museum one comes upon Idyllwild’s most popular hangout, Café Aroma. A bistro, pub, espresso bar, art gallery, music venue, lending library, and social center rolled into one, Café Aroma exudes a relaxed bonhomie that recalls Big Sur. Open from 7 am to 9 pm, the cafe serves excellent food and drink in a quaint milieu. Live music accompanies dinner almost nightly, while the dining rooms and outdoor decks feature rotating art exhibits. Each Wednesday morning, a hiking club leaves the café for an excursion to the Tahquitz Wilderness. Locals drop in for early coffee and conversation. It’s tempting to take all your meals here. We did.

A drive of less than two hours connects Idyllwild with Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains. The very scenic route down CA-243 abounds with mountain vistas and fire-following spring flowers. From Redlands, CA-38 meanders northeast through an impressive rocky landscape that modulates into conifer territory as one climbs toward Big Bear.

Dubbed “Southern California’s only four-season resort,” Big Bear Lake nevertheless has an off-season in spring. After the skiers have departed and before the summer crowd has arrived, accommodations are plentiful and cheaper than at other times, although both weather and sightseeing are at their best in spring. The lake is a reservoir, like Lake Arrowhead. But unlike Arrowhead, which is densely developed around its entire rim, Big Bear Lake offers several points of public access. One of the most scenic is Boulder Bay, on the southwestern side.

Directly across from Boulder Bay on the lake’s northern shore lies the historic village of Fawnskin. At its center stands the red-and-white Fawn Lodge, a hotel built in 1917 and vacant since the late 1970s. Also on the main street is a log cabin that served as Fawnskin’s first Post Office and is now a picturesquely funky private residence. The tradition of building in bark-on logs continues here, as observed in at least two newer houses on North Shore Drive.

The Big Bear Discovery Center at 40971 North Shore Drive is the place to go for hiking and biking maps, camping information, Forest Service permits, and naturalist-led interpretive walks. From May through October, the center is open seven days a week from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.

Disregard any fictitious tales you may have heard about me doing inspections in the buff. Aside from the danger of sunburn, electric shock or harm to the casual observer, it would be unprofessional and I am, if nothing, unflinchingly professional. OK, check your legs for matching length, but I do think I have your attention and it is flashing that I want to talk about (and not the naughty kind).

Flashing is a word that every learned builder and architect knows well, but is one that means little or nothing to the inhabitants of even the leakiest house, though they would certainly benefit from the knowledge.

Flashings are a class of building components that are easy to miss because they are largely hidden. Nonetheless, they play such a vital role that it would not be an exaggeration to say their absence or misapplication in construction is involved in the majority of investigations in which buildings were found to leak.

In short, flashings keep buildings from leaking. You might say, “Well, I thought that roofs did that and siding and trims.” Well, this is true but the reason that those parts don’t leak is because they are flashed (or have inherent elements of flashing built into them).

A flashing is any of a series of shaped components designed to prevent water from entering a building where materials change shape or direction. When a pipe penetrates roof surface, a special flashing (this is a penetrated cone, bonded to a flat sheet that can be laid into the flat arraying of a roofed surface) is installed. Where a roof meets a higher story wall, a roof-to-wall flashing (or set of “leaf” flashings) is used. When a doorway penetrates a wall, a “head” flashing, among others is used.

Flashings address the water that wants to leak through a building surface at the most vulnerable points, those places where water running down a surface encounter a change in direction. It’s not easy to punch a hole in something and keep it from leaking. A flat surface is pretty easy to protect from leakage (though leaks still sometimes happen) through any of a catalogue of layering methods. Shingles have their layers, stucco has its too and wood planking as well. Each has a set of layers that make it “less” vulnerable to leakage if the rules get followed.

The real trouble occurs when we change direction or start punching holes in things. No matter how great the roofing material may be, one improperly installed skylight can easily leak during the first or fourth year. A 40-year roofing warrantee (remember that this only applies to the material and that installation is nearly always at fault) doesn’t help you much if water is leaking around the shingles through a hole or gap somewhere.

Window leaks are usually flashing leaks (though some windows are ready to leak when they leave the factory and I’ve heard estimates of failure as high as 15 percent in recent years).

When water comes running down a wall and hits a trim or opening, some of it has the potential to sneak inside by gravity or through capillary action (which is a process that can actually suck water into your house; so when you say that this leak sucks, you may well be right). Only the very careful assembly of the window, using an array of shaped or flexible materials and membranes can prevent water from finding its way inside.

The exact position of each substrate is critical and windows often leak from a simple mis-folding of a piece of tar-paper or felt. The best installation relies on several layers of protection, often referred to as a “belt and suspenders” approach in which we use felts or house-wrap to direct the water back out of the house, as it tries to sneak inside, and then to add metal or flexible tape flashings on top of these as a second tier protection. It’s not at all unlike the way our bodies repel infection. We start with skin, which is multi-layered itself and then have layers of protection below that, if invaders make it past the gates.

The ancestors of today’s buildings employed many of the same techniques but with a different set of materials. Galvanized metal strips (the most common flashings) may not have been available but a window assembly could still be made of a series of elements that have inclines and that puzzle together in such a way as to force water to go uphill in order to get inside (which can happen but usually doesn’t). If you then add good adhesion or cohesion of materials to this methodology and thick lead-laden paints, you stand a good chance that you’ll keep the water out. As we’ve moved into a fast-paced world of cheapness, we’ve come to rely more and more on technologies such as flashings to keep the water out. That said, I think that well-installed flashings are a huge advance over the old-world methods involved in the assembly of the building envelope. If for no other reason, they allow us to perform tricks that would have been considered nuts in the past, including the installation of skylights in roofs.

If you want to find the flashings on your own house, it can be tricky (since many are either completely or partially hidden) but here’s a short tour. If you can step across the street and your house has a well-pitched roof, you will likely see some conical flashings (as noted above) around the pipes and vents that penetrate the roof. If you have walls that ascent from the roof to enshroud a higher story or dormer, you may be able to see some metal that runs along the corner where the roof meets that wall (the upper edges should be hidden under the bottom of that wall’s siding but are often improperly stuck to the surface and will therefore require periodic application of sealants). The edge of a roof often has a metal trim that prevents water from getting into the structure of the roof or walls below. With all of these, the same principle applies, that being that they must be placed in such a way that water cannot get behind them under reasonable circumstances. Therefore, they will usually be tucked up under the upper material and splay out onto the lower material so as to assure that water cannot get up underneath. This job varies with the landscape and if you take your time to think about it, you can usually see whether they’re doing the right thing. It ain’t rocket science.

Another stop on our tour is the “head” flashing on a door or window. If you think about it, the most vulnerable place on the door or window for water leakage is the top where water splashes against the top trim or the frame of the window itself. If you fold a piece of metal so that the top part fits under the siding above the window and hangs out over the trim at the top of the window, it will then take a very hard stiff wind to push water up to the top. If we do this right, there isn’t a likely wind sufficient to make it leak. We do the same thing on the sides of windows and doors but mostly, we just use the paper and plastic sheeting that we are already laying below the siding and by clever folding and careful use of fasteners (so as to avoid poorly placed puncture points) on these sides and bottoms. A doorway to the outside should be fitted into a shallow pan that allows drainage only to the exterior, although this is a newer practice and one that’s not being eagerly received by many in the construction community. Notwithstanding, many a leak that has plagued lower floors below a second story doorway can be avoided with this clever use of folded metal or cast plastic.

While the full understanding of flashings is certainly part of the master class of building, looking for them during construction and understanding their intelligence or potential efficacy isn’t beyond the ken of the average adolescent.

Here’s your assignment of this week. Stop at the next construction site you see if you can follow the imaginary drips of water down the roof and down the wall, looking for how the paper and metal have been laid as repellants. You might just find that one of those sheets or strips is upside down and waiting with yawning thirst to drink in and rot that wall. Nothing would surprise me less than a discovery such as that by a patient, inquisitive person who doesn’t even own a hammer.

“Islands in the Park” Celebrating the Cultural Heritage of the Caribbean with music by Third World, The Mighty Sparrow, Collie Budz, Shiela Hilton and the New Kingston Band at 7 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheatre, Joaquin Miller Park, Oakland. Tickets are $25-$45. 832-5400.

San Francisco Cabaret Opera “The Old Maid and the Thief” and “No Exit” at 7 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-289-6877. www.goathall.org

Lilia Valitova, a composer and pianist, will introduce her new CD, “Yearning” piano suites based on Jewish folk and liturgical melodies at 7:30 p.m. at the JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $10 - $20 sliding scale, and benefits the Aquarian Minyan. 528-6725.

Novella Carpenter in Conversation with Michael Pollan at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley. Cost is $6-$12. berkelyarts.org

FOUND Magazine celebrates the release of its latest collection “Requiem for a Paper Bag: Celebrities and Civilians Tell Stories of the Best Lost, Tossed, and Found Items from Around the World” at 8 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 649-1320.

MUSIC AND DANCE

San Francisco Cabaret Opera “Inferno: The Second Circle of Hell: The Lustful” at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-289-6877. www.goathall.org

Amy Stewart reads from “Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222.

Lorna Dee Cervantes and Al Young read their poetry as part of Berkeley City College’s Summer Creative Writing Intensive at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. Cost is $3, free for students in the intensive. scoleman-at-peralta.edu

Alon Shalev reads from his new novel “Oilspill dotcom” at 7:30 p.m. at The Bread Workshpop, 1398 University Ave. www.alonshalev.com

Shawn Yang Ryan and Jerry Ratch read their work as part of Berkeley City College’s Summer Creative Writing Intensive at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. Cost is $3, free for students in the intensive. scoleman-at-peralta.edu

Todd Shimodo reads from his novel “Oh! A Mystery of Mono no Aware (The beautiful sadness in things)” at 3:30 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. www.asiabookcenter.com

MUSIC AND DANCE

Summer Solstice Music Festival, with over 50 diverse groups of performers from 1 to 7 p.m. along MacArthur Blvd in the Laurel District of Oakland. www.laurelsummersolsticemusicfestival.org

SalmonAid Festival with music by Albino, Mitch Woods, Zydeco Flames and others, food, and information about sustainable seafood, Sat. and Sun. from noon to 8 p.m. at Jack London Square, Oakland. www.salmonaid.org

The Oakland-East Bay Gay Men’s Chorus and Swing Fever of San Francisco “Cabaret-Zoot Suit!” at 7:30 p.m. at First Christian Church of Oakland, 111 Fairmount Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $30 and up. oebgmc.org

Open Opera Concert in the Park at 3 p.m. at Franklin Park, 1432 San Antonio Ave., Alameda. Free. www.alamedainfo.com

Joan Gelfand and Jenny Overman, poets, as part of the monthly New Moon Illuminations series, on Tammuz, brokenness, at 3:30 p.m. at Afikomen, 3042 Claremont Ave. 655-1977.

MUSIC AND DANCE

San Francisco Cabaret Opera “Inferno: The Second Circle of Hell: The Lustful” at 5 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-289-6877. www.goathall.org

The Oakland-East Bay Gay Men’s Chorus and Swing Fever of San Francisco “Cabaret-Zoot Suit!” at 5 p.m. at First Christian Church of Oakland, 111 Fairmount Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $30 and up. oebgmc.org

Solstice Celebration with Caroline Casey and the Flux, Isabellsa, Intersection, Soul Burners. Program at 6 p.m., live music at 8 p.m. Cost is $20-$25. Free after 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com

A handkerchief, given to a lady by her soldier husband, then stolen, turns romance into senseless tragedy in Othello. In Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, the innocuous accessory of the title, a gift by a wealthy lord to his young wife, turns romantic melodrama into wry comedy, as Wilde’s refracted view of manners and society takes a turn on the boards of Point Richmond’s venerable Masquers Playhouse.

Directed by Patricia Inabnet, whose version of that old thriller Angel’s Street was a highlight of the Masquers’ previous season, Lady Windermere’s Fan is reset in post-World War II London, with unassuming grace—and fine costumes by Linda Woody-Wood and scenic design by John Hull with background painting by Gordon Pagnello. Like Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, it combines humorous poise (and pose) with the melodrama of the “well-wrought play” (in three acts) of 19th-century Paris, London and New York, the predecessor to much commercial stagework of the West End and Broadway, and the modern feature film.

Wilde’s last, most famous and original play, The Importance of Being Earnest —regarded by many of his friends and supporters as being an a- or immoral piece of work—dispensed with the pretense of seriousness, camping up in mordant deadpan the preposterous conventions of the genre, skewering its romantic, social and “problem-play” pretensions with a withering insouciance in the delivery of endless and stunning bon mots.

In Lady Windermere’s Fan, Wilde reverses the polarity, by the final curtain, of the axis of moral judgment (and prejudice) respectively held by Lord and Lady Windermere (Abhimanyu Katyal and Amy Boulanger) in regard to Mrs. Erlynne (Michele Delattre), whom Lord Windermere seems entangled with, while languid Lord Darlington (“I can resist everything but temptation,” played by Craig Eychner), awaits his moment to pounce on the distraught Lady W.

That old vaudeville gag about the dying comedian, who, asked how it’s going, gasps out, “Death’s easy; comedy is hard!”—could be extended: Comedy is hard; Oscar’s impossible! John Gielgud remarked that the trick to acting Wilde is to never indicate that your character understands what she or he says or does is funny—while somehow letting the audience know that the actor does know it is—which gives some idea of Oscar’s real, original humor, bound up with his notion of The Mask. Bernard Shaw refashioned this in his own way to satirize Anglo-Saxondom, attracting the attention of Brecht, who “alienated” (or “made strange”) the actor as a figure in didactic and epic political theater.

In Lady Windermere’s Fan, the trick is to move from melodrama to comedy and back again with the gliding ease of a revolving door. Most of the burden falls upon Mesdames Boulanger and Delattre, with a bit of the load on M. Eychner.

They don’t get away with it seamlessly, but they do maintain their poise—especially Michele Delattre—with a decent deadpan. The cast of 15 plays Wilde’s game with remarkably good form, Loralee Windsor (as Duchess of Berwick) and Laura Morgan (as Lady Agatha) particularly, with a sly mother-daughter act, the Duchess “charmingly” riding herd on her cowed, eligible daughter (whose single, repeated line—“Yes, Mamma!”—is inflected with many accents, fleeting expressions and pantomimed body language), until she’s delivered safe unto the matrimonial intentions of an Aussie nouveau riche, and escapes Down Under.

“I lost one illusion last night: I thought I had no heart—and found I had one.” Oscar’s reverses are more paradoxical—and revealing—than the melodramatic coups-de-theatre he parodies. They’re true humor, characters finding themselves awkwardly otherwise than as expected, a true taste for the opposite: “I regret my bad actions, and you regret your good ones!”

Summer Brenner regularly swims long distances in Berkeley’s public pools. She is also an accomplished author who writes as gracefully as she swims.

Her latest book, I-5: A Novel of Crime, Transport, and Sex (Oakland: PM Press, 2009), is a novel about sex trafficking along one of California’s major highways.

It is not at all sleazy or pornographic, as its subject may suggest, nor is it noir fiction, as its misleading sensational cover implies, and it is not a “new mystery,” as shelved at Moe’s. It is literary fiction told from the point of view of Anya, a Russian immigrant, falsely lured to the United States for legitimate work as a clerk or waitress, only to find herself a sex slave. Anya is savvy and sensitive, plotting her own escape even as she endures the unpleasant toils of her forced servitude.

Brenner portrays Anya as a real flesh-and-blood person, as well as her relationships with others, who like her, are trapped into this “business,” her connections with her pimp/“manager,” and then her forced journey from Los Angeles to Oakland on I-5. Along the way she encounters thriller-like adventures that are breathtaking and gripping, but listing them would make the novel sound melodramatic, which it is not, so I’ll leave it to its lucky readers to learn her story.

Brenner says I-5, her eighth novel, was inspired by the events of 1999 in Berkeley when a 17-year-old Indian girl died of carbon monoxide poisoning in an apartment over Pasand restaurant on Shattuck Avenue. She and other teenagers had been brought to the United States from India by the Lakireddy family to work as cheap labor and sex providers. With the death exposing the trafficking, eventually many colluding family members were tried, fined, and given various prison sentences. Feminists, led by Diana Russell, picketed and boycotted the restaurant—some still do to this day—but Brenner took the incident many steps further, a tribute to her social conscience, especially her identification with immigrants and other marginalized groups, her feminism, and her considerable writing skills. The dedication to this slim book (186 pages) reads: “Written as a curse on them that force women and girls into bondage.” This is an impressive literary novel, well worth reading.

Summer Brenner was raised in Atlanta, Georgia. She moved north, east, and eventually west, taking up residence in Berkeley where she has been a long-time resident. Her writing has appeared in dozens of anthologies and literary magazines. Performances of her work include “The Flood,” a poem for four voices; “The Missing Lover,” a one-act play; and the poetry and musical extravaganza, Arundo. One of her novels, Presque nulle part, was published in France by Gallimard. She has given scores of readings in the United States, France, and Japan. Grant awards include the California Arts Council, the Creative Work Fund, and in partnership with Community Works, the Christensen Fund and the Lesher Foundation. Currently, she is working on literacy projects in Richmond. Nearly Nowhere (PM Press) and My Life in Clothes (Red Hen Press) are scheduled for publication in 2010.

Summer Brenner and the West Contra Costa Unified School District, in partnership with Community Works, received a grant from the Creative Work Fund to develop and publish a young adult novel that reflects the life stories of students in Richmond’s Iron Triangle neighborhood. Richmond Tales: Lost Secrets of the Iron Triangle, written by Brenner and illustrated by Miguel Perez, tells the story of Mario and Maisha and their unlikely friendship. They live in present-day Richmond, but through the magic powers of Misty Horn, they travel backward and forward through time to different eras of Richmond: Native American, 1915, 1942, and 2050. The book is directed to students age 9 to 12 and will be distributed to more than 4,500 fourth- and fifth-graders for summer reading. To purchase the book, call 486-2340 or write to community_works@yahoo.com. A reading will be held at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, June 18 at the Richmond Public Library Terrrace, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond.

Owen Hill, longtime bookseller at Moe’s Books on Telegraph Avenue, will read from his new humorous detective novel about the Berkeley adventures of Clay Blackburn, book scout and private eye, The Incredible Double (P.M. Press), for the reading series he established and continues to run at Moe’s. Summer Brenner will also read from her latest, I-5: A Novel of Crime, Transport, and Sex.

“Summer and I read together on tour,” Hill said, “Five readings in New York City. We come off as a team. She writes hardhitting noir; mine’s full of jokes.”

Hill’s detective fiction comes from the building he lives in, around the corner from Moe’s, on Dwight Way, the Chandler Apartments, also the title of his first novel, published in 2002 and now out of print.

“It’s a grand old building,” said Hill, “And would work well in a mystery, I thought. It became a kind of joke. I’d always written poetry. On a whim, when I was laid up, I started The Chandler Apartments. I must’ve joked around enough. I’d always been a mystery fan, knew the form as a reader; there’s a lot of pulp in my library. I stole from [poet] Jack Spicer’s Tower of Babel the idea of using the detective novel to poke fun at the poets in your circle. The Chandler Apartments is full of poets. In a bland world, poets are still kind of nutty. I respect them for it.”

Asked to give a thumbnail description of the story, Hill said, “With a short book—The Incredible Double is 140 pages—it’s hard to give a reading without giving the plot away! Clay Blackburn’s a book scout and poet at the end of his scouting run. It’s harder and harder to make a living as a scout, so he falls into detecting. Through some weird fluke, he’s hired to find a Berkeley nut who threatened a CEO, whose security forces don’t know how to penetrate the Telegraph Avenue underground.

Questioned about that impenetrable underground, which swirls outside Moe’s front window, Hill replied, “It’s as I’d like it to be. There’s not much of a Bohemia anymore, in this country at least. But there is in my novel.”

Pressed about Berkeley locations in the book, Hill cautiously answered, “Moe’s is in it a lot, of course, where Clay sells his books; a couple of my coworkers get to have cameos. There’s a kidnapping in Elephant Pharmacy—gone now. Clay likes to drink at Cesar’s; he meets his love interest there. My car mechanic, from Pete’s Automotive, happens to drink at Cesar’s, too, so another cameo.”

“It’s kind of a Berkeley thing,” Hill added, “An auto mechanic with an advanced degree. The overeducated underachiever. A friend’s plumber is a marine biologist! Such a beautiful part of Berkeley, which makes conversations so interesting. It doesn’t happen everywhere.”

Hill himself hails from Southern California, “Torrance, the suburbs, till 20, 21, then to Santa Cruz. I was heading for college, but dropped out. I did a stint as ice cream maker at Polar Bear, pre-Haagen-Daaz gourmet ice cream, then got a job as a buyer at Logos Books on the Mall. Then came to San Francisco, worked at Columbus Books, after Discovery Books went out of business there, near City Lights. Then did a stint at Shakespeare & Co. while I argued my way into Moe’s—‘Moe, I could buy for you...’ ‘No, no...’ Finally, he gave in.”

Moe gave in in 1986. Reflecting on almost a quarter century on the Avenue, Hill said, “It’s been a long ride, but it’s home. It’s the best bookstore I was ever in. Moe took care of his employees, and that’s still happening, post-Moe. It’s a little oasis.”

Expanding on the theme, Hill said, “I’ve always really liked public life, bookstores and cafes as the place to make a living. There’s a constant flow of characters.”

The reading series at Moe’s “started very informally, then snowballed. So many other bookstores were dropping off; we became the premiere reading series in the East Bay—readings once, twice, three times in a week. But it began almost by accident. There was a little garden area behind Moe’s we don’t use anymore. [Poets] Clark Coolidge, Michael McClure, Nanos Valaoritis were all friendly customers, shopping the poetry section. I said, Why not come outside? That was 1999. Then we came back in, later got a microphone ... Now I’ve invited myself to read in my own series. And I accepted.”

Bookseller, “curator” of the poetry section at Moe’s, himself a poet, detective novelist and humorist ... “I’m happy to be in the middle of it. Coming from the suburbs, I’ve been running away from blandness my whole life. Berkeley isn’t bland.”

“Say you come across someone in the street, a street person who tells you a story. Later, you hear them tell the same story to someone else, and you feel a little betrayed, like they’re on a loop.”

Peter Josheff talked about the opera he composed, with lyrics by poet Jaime Robles. “This has been going on for all eternity; it’s not the first time it happens.”

Josheff and Robles will see their opera, Inferno, Second Circle of Hell—The Lustful, from Dante’s Divine Comedy, premiered at Live Oak Theater next Wednesday and Thursday at 8 p.m., and again on the following Sunday at 5, as part of San Francisco Cabaret Opera’s Weekends in Hell.

Josheff and Robles have been working together since the mid-1990s. Smaller projects premiered at the annual Harvest of Song series at the Berkeley Art Center.

“We always planned to do a large project,” Josheff said. “So we proceeded methodically with smaller ones. She came to me with the idea—and Jaime always comes to me with exactly what I’m looking for. I can always set her text easily.”

“I’d been looking for an opera to do for some time,” Robles said. “I was taking a writing course; they asked us to do some collaborative work. During that assignment I read the story of Francesca and Paolo [in Canto V of Dante’s poem]. Given its very theatrical and dramatic character, I thought it was suitable for opera, and that it would fit well with the kind of composing Peter’s good at: lyrical, sensual, a romantic quality about it. He might not like hearing that!”

“In the Second Circle, they can’t control their passions,” Josheff explained, “They’re blown by the wind from one passion to another. It was easy to compose music that tries to convey passion for each character. Paolo croons like a pop singer. He doesn’t know he’s in hell; he’s still trying to seduce Francesca. Francesca knows where she is; all she can ask is, What am I doing here? What crime did I commit? She looks at Paolo and can’t fall for it anymore. And the wind’s an actual character, a monster demon, kind of charming in a way. He torments the damned with good-natured, pitiless cruelty.”

“Most of those who approach the material deal with the story of Paolo and Francesca by telling her life, her love affair and death,” Robles said. “What really interested me more were the moral and ethical qualities of the story; what’s hell all about? Why did Dante, the quintessential love poet, write this story in which love is repaid by death? But I wanted to make the story more contemporary; I found articles where psychiatrists compare the medieval vision of hell with psychiatric states. I used fragments of medieval texts on melancholia in the libretto to set up the connection, to bridge the medieval to the contemporary, by portraying depression as a form of hell in life on this planet. And our ethical system is different. I came up with psychological disconnection and projection as their sin, their crime: Paolo totally absorbed in a fantasy of his own making, and Francesca realizing she’s just a projection of that, that nothing can be done about it. They suffer from the disease of narcissism.”

“I think there’s a lot of irony in this work,” Josheff said, “a sweetness in the music, with a lot going on underneath. The characters, especially Francesca, make their pitch to the audience, as if the audience is an embodiment of Dante and Virgil, knowing they’re in hell, yet drawn to the damned, affected by the torment, the suffering.”

“When I finished writing the first section,” Robles said, “I said to myself, ‘This is a downer!’ I didn’t want people to walk out of the theater feeling like they wanted to kill themselves. But Peter’s way of looking at it was more humorous. He has Paolo singing a kind of doo-wop love song. I tend to be a little abstract in writing, in my perceptions of life. And that’s what I like about opera. It’s public, stagey, theatrical, kind of an antidote to the private experience you create writing poetry, talking to a person reading a book.”

Josheff mentioned “the chorus of lost souls, the damned, dancers from Huckabay Dance Company, Jenny McAllister—a wonderful collaboration!—who provide commentary through movement across the stage, with a lot of sensuality. The damned are Hell’s Wind’s flock of sheep; there’s something pastoral about his attitude toward this suffering under his thumb. Francesca is passionate, spiky, rebelling against fate, and remains alone on stage for her final aria when everyone else drifts off with the damned.”

Josheff concluded, “This is the first part of the work; there’s going to be the Ninth Circle, with the sufferings of Francesca’s husband, Paolo’s brother—she was betrayed, seduced by proxy—in a lake of ice, a sense of contrast. But this is the culminating moment in Jaime’s and my collaboration. We worked hard to get here. And it opens the door to other large-scale works.”

INFERNO, SECOND CIRCLE OF HELL

8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, June 17 and 18; 5 p.m. Sunday, June 21 at Live Oak Theater. Part of San Francisco Cabaret Opera’s Weekends in Hell, which also features Zachary Watkins’ No Exit, from the play by Jean-Paul Sartre, and Gian-Carlo Menotti’s The Old Man and the Thief, A Grotesque Opera in 14 Scenes.

Celebrating the Rich Cultural Heritage of the Caribbean through Music, with Third World Reggae Band from Jamaica, Calypso monarch The Mighty Sparrow from Trinidad and Tobago, Sheila Hylton (reggae from Jamaica, London and New York), Collie Buddz (reggae and dancehall from Bermuda) and the New Kingston Band appearing 7 p. m. Sunday evening at Woodminster Amphitheatre in Oakland’s Joaquin Miller Park, with awards presented to celebrate and honor the contributions of Caribbean Americans.

“Four years ago, Representative Barbara Lee introduced a resolution recognizing June as Caribbean Recognition Month,” said Shorron Levy of CBTV1 (Caribbean TV online). “In 2006, there was a commemorative ceremony in Oakland; in 2007, we began giving formal awards, for both those within and outside the States. We brought the former Prime Minister of Jamaica here, to the Rotunda in Oakland; it was nicely attended. Other local awardees have included writer and teacher Opal Palmer Adisa. This year, the Mighty Sparrow and Third World will receive True Legends awards, and we will honor local people with Caribbean American Heritage Legacy Awards: Dr. Teresita Dean, who works with nonprofits to help teens; the Jamaican American Association of Northern California, based in Oakland, providing scholarships and other help here and in Jamaica; Sistas-Wit-Style, a teenage dance troupe, based in East Oakland, who perform Caribbean dance to make a difference in teens’ lives; and Art’s Jamaican Market at Broadway and 40th in Oakland.”

Levy talked about “People catching on—‘What’s this month? What are we supposed to do?’ Caribbean Americans have made big contributions. Look at Harry Belafonte, Shirley Chisholm, Colin Powell ... Stevie Wonder’s granddad was Jamaican. But it’s all intertwined; nobody knows.”

This year’s festival and awards highlight Caribbean music. Reggae has been a familiar presence in the Bay Area, steadily since the ’70s. Calypso and Soca (Soul Calypso) had a local following and frequent shows in the East Bay and San Francisco with Caribbean performers like the Mighty Sparrow, Calypso Rose, Winston Soso and David Rudder making appearances at venues like the Berkeley Community Theatre, The Justice League (the old Both/And) in San Francisco, and clubs like Mingles on Hegenberger Road in Oakland. Local groups like Jeff Narrell and Rhythm ’n’ Steel and the Panhandlers—a steel drum orchestra, led by Jim Munzenrider, for years based at Ohlone College, now on the Peninsula—promoted Calypso and related music, and brought in collaborators from the Islands. But the situation has changed. “Crazy [Edwin Ayoung, a leading Calypso-Soca singer from Trinidad] lives half the year in San Jose,” said Levy, “but only sits in or performs during Carnaval.”

The Mighty Sparrow, who will perform and receive a Legends award Sunday, is perhaps the most acclaimed Calypso singer in history. Nicknamed Sparrow because he “hopped around” (“like James Brown!”) when other Calypsonians performed “flatfooted,” he was born Slinger Francisco in Grenada, growing up in Trinidad. Since 1956, The Mighty Sparrow has won the Carnival Road March competition eight times and Calypso Monarch title an unprecedented eleven times, the top honors in the music. His songs are, in turn, romantic, ribald and satiric. His satire made hits like “Philip, My Dear,” when an intruder entered Queen Elizabeth’s bedchamber, and “Wanted Dead Or Alive,” in which Sparrow crooned one by one the names of deposed dictators, each “a wanted man,” who “found it hard to survive, now that he’s wanted, dead or alive.” Other politically-tinged hits include “Human Rights” (1981), “Capitalism Gone Mad” (1983) and “This Is Madness” (1995). Last year, Sparrow released “Barrack the Magnificent” in support of the Obama campaign.

Under the Orinda sky, the stage at the Bruns Amphitheatre is dominated by a bed, a crowned statue of the Virgin with child on a plinth, and a stairway adorned with bright tagging, as if it were an Expressionist sunset. Through these urban markers, old and new, the action of Cal Shakes’ production of Romeo and Juliet will pour, interrupted by its famous tableaux of balcony, bedroom and tomb, young love and death.

The conceit, to use a word of Elizabethan issue, of coupling Shakespeare’s play of two feuding Renaissance clans with present-day youth culture isn’t brand-new. Mercutio’s bawdy swagger down the streets of Verona is here abetted by a Vespa in the aisles. There’s contemporary dancing at the Capulets’ ball, nicely choreographed by Marybeth Cavanaugh. There’s a constant youthful sense, if not always one of danger, of trespassing in a world where someone else makes the rules. In this production, it’s a little too suburbanite; “permissive,” as the media would insist. A complex more than a sensibility increasingly capable of discovery amid the specters of both childhood dependence and impending post-adolescent conformity.

With Jonathan Moscone’s direction and the estimable dramaturgical commitment of Philippa Kelly, the show is clear and articulate, well-delineated—the sometimes carnavalesque comedy of the first half, until Tybalt kills Mercutio and Romeo Tybalt, followed by the relentless tragic dislocation and sense of loss and mourning, accentuated by youth and the vividness of fresh experience of the second—underscores what Kelly notes as the Bard’s sense of the evanescence of love, beauty, the productions of time.

It also allows the cast to display some excellence in their craft. Besides convincing portrayals by the young lovers (Alex Morf and Sarah Nealis), Catherine Castellanos earns applause for her game, bawdy Nurse, Jud Williford makes a charming and ribald Mercutio, Julian Lopez-Morillas an engaged and engaging Prince, and—best of all—James Carpenter as Capulet goes from indulgent patriarch, blocking Tybalt (Craig Marker) menacing Romeo (“He shall be endured”), to self-righteous tyrant, forcing unxious, insistent Paris (Liam Vincent) on his only child, whose lovelorn longings are elsewhere. And this passes over good characterizations and moments by others in a big cast.

The clarity of articulation is undermined by arch overaccenting, which impedes the flow of the language, the turnover and accumulation of the lines, like too much business dispells meaning from movement and gesture. There’s a sense of dancing around the play, ornamenting it instead of discovering its real poetry. Shakespeare is elusive, as furtive at heart as the theme of evanescence, like the white deer of truth Herman Melville said flashed from tree to tree, never seen exactly in the tragedies. Moscone’s production skillfully resets and retells the plot, but doesn’t get to the gist of the story, nor the impulse that inspired the same poet to such later reflections on love as Othello and Antony and Cleopatra.

In a studio with mirrored walls and ballet barres, dancers are learning a series of steps from “Gorgeous tragedy,” a solo variation from Mark Morris’ L’allegro, il penseroso, ed il moderato. They cup their hands as if they were holding water and throw their arms backward, tossing that water over their shoulder; at the same time, they kick a foot outward. They bring their arms and hands together before their face, part their hands, and lean forward, arms dropped toward the floor and dangling, with the smallest suggestion of a pendulum swinging. The dancers finish the combination of movement by tracing a serpentine curve with their fingers in the air in front of them.

What may appear strange about the class is that everyone is seated in chairs. And there’s something else different about these dancers: although half of them are dance teachers from different parts of the East Bay, the other half are sufferers of the neurological disease called Parkinson’s.

A degenerative disease of the brain, Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a movement disorder characterized by muscle rigidity, tremor and a slowing of physical movement. It has been known for some time that exercise helps ease the symptoms and may even slow the progression of the disease, but it has only recently been suggested that dance might be the most effective form of exercise for the Parkinson’s patient.

How Dance for PD came about

Eight years ago the Brooklyn Parkinson Group and the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) began an unusual collaboration at the Dance Group’s studio in Brooklyn, when members of the company, David Leventhal and John Heginbotham, began giving classes on a weekly basis to people affected by Parkinson’s.

The collaboration was proposed by Olie Westheimer, the founder and director of the Brooklyn Parkinson Group, a chapter of the National Parkinson Foundation.

Westheimer’s lifetime interest in dance had led her to the MMDG studio. “Olie didn’t want us to know anything about Parkinson’s before we started teaching class,” Leventhal says. The idea was that dancers are experts at movement and that they have a similar relationship to movement that PD patients do, which is to be “totally mindful” of how they move, and “to bring consciousness to movement.”

What is taught in class has developed continuously over the years as a process of feedback between the dancers teaching and the PD participants. Before class begins, Leventhal cautions everyone to move only as much as is comfortable. “You are your own very best choreographer,” he explains.

The movements taught are generally simple, but their accomplishment is subtle. Heginbotham instructs the students on the dynamics of a single movement of the arm, or a shift between kinds of movement: “The first movement is like you’re in a beer hall. You are wearing lederhosen. And the second movement should be as much like ballet as you can make it. So it’s from beer hall to ballet.”

Unlike beginning dance classes that often emphasize the repetition of codified movement, the Dance for PD classes ask for creativity and individual expression as well. “I think it’s time,” says Heginbotham, “for our Name Game.” Leventhal explains, “This is a choreographic identification. You are going to give us a little phrase that is your identifying movement.” One after another each dancer improvises a series of steps they feel is reflective of themselves while the other dancers mirror the action and the pianist improvises, flowing melodically between classical music, jazz and show tunes, slow and fast rhythms.

Here at last

MMDG’s dancers first began their Dance for PD in the Bay Area several years ago, through Susan Weber, the assistant artistic director at Berkeley Ballet Theater. A former dancer with the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in New York, Weber is currently Mark Morris’ assistant on projects at San Francisco Ballet and often teaches company class for Morris’ dancers. Weber provided the connection between Leventhal and Heginbotham and the Berkeley Ballet Theater, which is now the main organizer of Dance for PD in the Bay Area.

Last year, with the support of Cal Performances, Berkeley Ballet Theater applied for and received funding from the Chancellor’s Community Partnership fund, which they are seeking to renew in order to further develop the program.

The classes have been so inspiring that the PD dancers attending founded their own organization, PDActive, an advocacy group of Berkeley/Oakland-based people impacted by Parkinson’s disease whose mission is to strengthen the local PD community. Dance classes are a main focus of their activities, and the organization acts as advisor to the Berkeley Ballet Theater, helping to develop movement programs, publicize the program and raise funds. Currently, classes are held three times a month at a Berkeley Ballet Theater studio in the Julia Morgan Theater building. And a Thursday semi-monthly class is also given at Oakland’s Danspace at 473 Hudson St.

In his book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, neurologist Oliver Sacks writes that music gives Parkinson’s sufferers exactly “what they lack, which is tempo and rhythm and organized time.” He might have added that dancing to music infuses their lives with energy and joy.

Dance for PD in the East BAy

Information about Berkeley Ballet

Theater’s Dance for PD program can be found at www.berkeleyballet.org.

PDActive can be reached at

info@pdactive.org. To reserve a spot in a class, call 510-479-6119 or email at dance@pdactive.org.

A video about the Dance for PD class can be found at the MMDG website at:

foolsFURY, the innovative theater company that’s co-produced with Shotgun, hosts their annual Fury Factory festival of experimental and movement-based performers and theater companies from all over North America and as far off as Liverpool and Afghanistan, playing in different venues almost every evening. In the Berkeley-Oakland area, Ragged Wing Ensemble performs So Many Ways to Kill a Man; Just Theater presents Take Me to the Bridge; Sara Zimmerman performs in Aphasia; Deborah Eliezer and Silvia Girardi in Run If You Care About Dying; David Szlasa with Gadget; and from Hercules, Ochlos Theatre Workshop with Medea3. foolsFURY performs Port Out, Starboard; cohost Theatre of Yugen stages the classic Japanese Kyogen comedy Shuron and Erik Ehn’s Pretty—all at NohSpace and Traveling Jewish Theatre in the San Francisco’s Project Artaud, now through June 27. $12–$15. (800) 838-3006. foolsfury.org.

The brand-new Art House Gallery and Cultural Center, housed in what was once a blacksmith’s shop, opens on Saturday with a celebration fom noon till 10 p. m. featuring an art exhibit, “Visionary Surrealism, Fantasy and Psychedelic Art,” with work by a score of artists; music by more than a dozen players and singers (including Naomi Ruth Eisenberg of Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks fame); poets Al Young, Luis Garcia, Harold Adler, Richard Krech and others; theatrical performance by Fella-Fem and psychedelic lightshow by LSD Visuals; with a potluck. $5–$10 donation. 2905 Shattuck Ave. (near Ashby, across from Berkeley Bowl). 472-3170. berkeleyarthouse.wordpress.com.

Wilde Irish, dubbed the area’s Best Bloomin’ Thespians by the Bay Guardian, celebrate their sixth annual Bloomsday in Berkeley bash on Tuesday, June 16, “the day Leopold Bloom, the most famous Jew in Ireland, and his contemporaries ... walked, wandered, meandered and staggered through ... Dublin city and county ... in one day (and night): June 16, 1904.” Passages of James Joyce’s epic modern novel Ulysses will be given staged readings, along with other Joycean prose. One time only, 7:30 p. m. at the Gaia Arts Center, 2116 Allston Way, near Shattuck (and Berkeley BART). $12–$15 ($20 includes “Wine of the Country”). 644-9940. www.wildeirish.org.

The 39th annual Live Oak Park Fair features work for sale by 110 artists and craftspeople (a select group of which will be exhibited by the co-sponsoring Berkeley Art Center) and entertainment by Tippy Canoe (ukelele and ’60s Girl Group/Country-style vocals), Mikie Lee Prasard (former blues & acoustic jam leader at Blakes), Wildsang (blues duos), Girltalk band (World Jazz) and Violet the Clown. Under the big trees alongside Codornices Creek, 1301 Shattuck at Berryman, 10–6 Saturday and Sunday, with free shuttles every 20 minutes to and from North Berkeley BART (another co-sponsor, along with ACCI Gallery and the UC Botanical Garden, among others). This year held in memory of artist Claus Sievert. Wheelchair accessible. Free. 227-7110. liveoakparkfair.org.

Now a private residence, this log cabin was Fawnskin’s first post office.

Each September, the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, New York, holds a rustic furniture fair featuring “unique interpretations of rustic found in handcrafted furniture, furnishings, and fine art.” The Adirondacks are widely considered to be the fount of rustic style, which found expression across North America, including the San Jacinto and San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California.

The first European inhabitants of most scenic mountain areas on either coast were those who sought to exploit their timber and mining resources. Later came land promoters who lured vacationers by providing ready access via trains and roads. Unlike the Adirondack Park—the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous United States, created in 1892 by the State of New York to remain “forever wild”—Southern California’s scenic mountains are administered by a patchwork of federal and state agencies, Indian reservations, and private entities.

The resort communities in the San Jacinto and San Bernardino Mountains had their beginnings in the late 19th century. An 1890s promotional brochure for the Bear Valley Resort in Pine Lake (now Big Bear Lake) was illustrated with rustic log cabins nestling at the foot of towering pine trees. In 1912, the resort became known as Pine Knot Lodge. Was the name derived from the first Adirondack Great Camp, William West Durant’s Camp Pine Knot on Raquette Lake?

Begun in 1877 and completed 13 years later, Camp Pine Knot set the tone for the Adirondack Rustic style: log construction, native stone work, and decorative work in twigs, branches, and bark.

Once owned by the likes of Collis P. Huntington, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Margaret Emerson Vanderbilt, the Adirondack Great Camps are multi-building complexes. Their counterparts in Southern California are far more modest, usually consisting of a single house. Nevertheless, the chief elements are all there: logs (often with the bark left on) or shingle exteriors; river rock chimneys; twigs and branches in balcony railings and fences.

Not many of the old Southern California log houses are still standing. Some of the best examples are to be found in Idyllwild, in the San Jacinto Mountains. Reached via the Panoramic State Route 243 from Banning, this quiet village of 3,500 bills itself as “an oasis of sanity in Southern California.” Less than an hour away from Palm Springs, Idyllwild is a hiking and cultural center. From Humber Park at the northeastern edge of the village, many hikers climb the Devil’s Slide Trail to Tahquitz Peak, enjoying spectacular views of granite boulders, distant valleys and mountains, all softened by the abundant native flowers that make a showing in late May and June. Another native denizen, displaced in Berkeley by the Eastern Fox Squirrel, is the beautiful Western Gray Squirrel (Sciurus griseus).

Idyllwild’s first resort camp opened in 1890. In 1901, a sanatorium was built here for tuberculosis patients. Remodeled into a hotel and burnt down, it was rebuilt in 1905 as a resort. In 1917, the land was subdivided and sold as vacation lots. Some of the early homes built at that time may still be found on the banks of Strawberry Creek. One of those is the Eloc Lodge on River Drive. The former vacation home of the Cole family from Long Beach, it is constructed of unpeeled pine logs, its central feature being a sturdy chimney of smooth river rocks. The attic room in the front gable opens onto a balcony of rough sticks, buttressed by two branches. In front of the house, attached to an old Black Oak tree, a wooden sign bears the first stanza of Arthur Chapman’s famous poem, “Out Where The West Begins”: Out where the handclasp’s a little stronger, Out where the smile dwells a little longer, That’s where the West begins. Out where the sun is a little brighter, Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter, Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter, That’s where the West begins.

Behind Eloc Lodge is a more elaborate timber-and-stone house flanked by several accessory buildings, all built of logs or local rock. Houses such as these are often filled with local handcrafted furniture. The Silver Pines Lodge and Creekside Cabins across the driveway began its life in 1923 as a furniture workshop. In 1934, Charles “Selden” Belden, a photographer from Oberlin, OH, moved to the San Jacinto Mountains and began producing handmade furniture under the Pinecraft label. Pinecraft furniture is now deemed collectible, and examples of it may be seen in the Idyllwild Area Historical Society Museum, 54470 North Circle Drive. Built in the 1920s, this shingled cabin was the summer home of one family for nearly 80 years. Open on weekends, the museum provides an introduction to the varied history of the region from the early days of the Cahuilla Indians to the era of organized summer camps.

A couple of blocks east of the museum one comes upon Idyllwild’s most popular hangout, Café Aroma. A bistro, pub, espresso bar, art gallery, music venue, lending library, and social center rolled into one, Café Aroma exudes a relaxed bonhomie that recalls Big Sur. Open from 7 am to 9 pm, the cafe serves excellent food and drink in a quaint milieu. Live music accompanies dinner almost nightly, while the dining rooms and outdoor decks feature rotating art exhibits. Each Wednesday morning, a hiking club leaves the café for an excursion to the Tahquitz Wilderness. Locals drop in for early coffee and conversation. It’s tempting to take all your meals here. We did.

A drive of less than two hours connects Idyllwild with Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains. The very scenic route down CA-243 abounds with mountain vistas and fire-following spring flowers. From Redlands, CA-38 meanders northeast through an impressive rocky landscape that modulates into conifer territory as one climbs toward Big Bear.

Dubbed “Southern California’s only four-season resort,” Big Bear Lake nevertheless has an off-season in spring. After the skiers have departed and before the summer crowd has arrived, accommodations are plentiful and cheaper than at other times, although both weather and sightseeing are at their best in spring. The lake is a reservoir, like Lake Arrowhead. But unlike Arrowhead, which is densely developed around its entire rim, Big Bear Lake offers several points of public access. One of the most scenic is Boulder Bay, on the southwestern side.

Directly across from Boulder Bay on the lake’s northern shore lies the historic village of Fawnskin. At its center stands the red-and-white Fawn Lodge, a hotel built in 1917 and vacant since the late 1970s. Also on the main street is a log cabin that served as Fawnskin’s first Post Office and is now a picturesquely funky private residence. The tradition of building in bark-on logs continues here, as observed in at least two newer houses on North Shore Drive.

The Big Bear Discovery Center at 40971 North Shore Drive is the place to go for hiking and biking maps, camping information, Forest Service permits, and naturalist-led interpretive walks. From May through October, the center is open seven days a week from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.

Disregard any fictitious tales you may have heard about me doing inspections in the buff. Aside from the danger of sunburn, electric shock or harm to the casual observer, it would be unprofessional and I am, if nothing, unflinchingly professional. OK, check your legs for matching length, but I do think I have your attention and it is flashing that I want to talk about (and not the naughty kind).

Flashing is a word that every learned builder and architect knows well, but is one that means little or nothing to the inhabitants of even the leakiest house, though they would certainly benefit from the knowledge.

Flashings are a class of building components that are easy to miss because they are largely hidden. Nonetheless, they play such a vital role that it would not be an exaggeration to say their absence or misapplication in construction is involved in the majority of investigations in which buildings were found to leak.

In short, flashings keep buildings from leaking. You might say, “Well, I thought that roofs did that and siding and trims.” Well, this is true but the reason that those parts don’t leak is because they are flashed (or have inherent elements of flashing built into them).

A flashing is any of a series of shaped components designed to prevent water from entering a building where materials change shape or direction. When a pipe penetrates roof surface, a special flashing (this is a penetrated cone, bonded to a flat sheet that can be laid into the flat arraying of a roofed surface) is installed. Where a roof meets a higher story wall, a roof-to-wall flashing (or set of “leaf” flashings) is used. When a doorway penetrates a wall, a “head” flashing, among others is used.

Flashings address the water that wants to leak through a building surface at the most vulnerable points, those places where water running down a surface encounter a change in direction. It’s not easy to punch a hole in something and keep it from leaking. A flat surface is pretty easy to protect from leakage (though leaks still sometimes happen) through any of a catalogue of layering methods. Shingles have their layers, stucco has its too and wood planking as well. Each has a set of layers that make it “less” vulnerable to leakage if the rules get followed.

The real trouble occurs when we change direction or start punching holes in things. No matter how great the roofing material may be, one improperly installed skylight can easily leak during the first or fourth year. A 40-year roofing warrantee (remember that this only applies to the material and that installation is nearly always at fault) doesn’t help you much if water is leaking around the shingles through a hole or gap somewhere.

Window leaks are usually flashing leaks (though some windows are ready to leak when they leave the factory and I’ve heard estimates of failure as high as 15 percent in recent years).

When water comes running down a wall and hits a trim or opening, some of it has the potential to sneak inside by gravity or through capillary action (which is a process that can actually suck water into your house; so when you say that this leak sucks, you may well be right). Only the very careful assembly of the window, using an array of shaped or flexible materials and membranes can prevent water from finding its way inside.

The exact position of each substrate is critical and windows often leak from a simple mis-folding of a piece of tar-paper or felt. The best installation relies on several layers of protection, often referred to as a “belt and suspenders” approach in which we use felts or house-wrap to direct the water back out of the house, as it tries to sneak inside, and then to add metal or flexible tape flashings on top of these as a second tier protection. It’s not at all unlike the way our bodies repel infection. We start with skin, which is multi-layered itself and then have layers of protection below that, if invaders make it past the gates.

The ancestors of today’s buildings employed many of the same techniques but with a different set of materials. Galvanized metal strips (the most common flashings) may not have been available but a window assembly could still be made of a series of elements that have inclines and that puzzle together in such a way as to force water to go uphill in order to get inside (which can happen but usually doesn’t). If you then add good adhesion or cohesion of materials to this methodology and thick lead-laden paints, you stand a good chance that you’ll keep the water out. As we’ve moved into a fast-paced world of cheapness, we’ve come to rely more and more on technologies such as flashings to keep the water out. That said, I think that well-installed flashings are a huge advance over the old-world methods involved in the assembly of the building envelope. If for no other reason, they allow us to perform tricks that would have been considered nuts in the past, including the installation of skylights in roofs.

If you want to find the flashings on your own house, it can be tricky (since many are either completely or partially hidden) but here’s a short tour. If you can step across the street and your house has a well-pitched roof, you will likely see some conical flashings (as noted above) around the pipes and vents that penetrate the roof. If you have walls that ascent from the roof to enshroud a higher story or dormer, you may be able to see some metal that runs along the corner where the roof meets that wall (the upper edges should be hidden under the bottom of that wall’s siding but are often improperly stuck to the surface and will therefore require periodic application of sealants). The edge of a roof often has a metal trim that prevents water from getting into the structure of the roof or walls below. With all of these, the same principle applies, that being that they must be placed in such a way that water cannot get behind them under reasonable circumstances. Therefore, they will usually be tucked up under the upper material and splay out onto the lower material so as to assure that water cannot get up underneath. This job varies with the landscape and if you take your time to think about it, you can usually see whether they’re doing the right thing. It ain’t rocket science.

Another stop on our tour is the “head” flashing on a door or window. If you think about it, the most vulnerable place on the door or window for water leakage is the top where water splashes against the top trim or the frame of the window itself. If you fold a piece of metal so that the top part fits under the siding above the window and hangs out over the trim at the top of the window, it will then take a very hard stiff wind to push water up to the top. If we do this right, there isn’t a likely wind sufficient to make it leak. We do the same thing on the sides of windows and doors but mostly, we just use the paper and plastic sheeting that we are already laying below the siding and by clever folding and careful use of fasteners (so as to avoid poorly placed puncture points) on these sides and bottoms. A doorway to the outside should be fitted into a shallow pan that allows drainage only to the exterior, although this is a newer practice and one that’s not being eagerly received by many in the construction community. Notwithstanding, many a leak that has plagued lower floors below a second story doorway can be avoided with this clever use of folded metal or cast plastic.

While the full understanding of flashings is certainly part of the master class of building, looking for them during construction and understanding their intelligence or potential efficacy isn’t beyond the ken of the average adolescent.

Here’s your assignment of this week. Stop at the next construction site you see if you can follow the imaginary drips of water down the roof and down the wall, looking for how the paper and metal have been laid as repellants. You might just find that one of those sheets or strips is upside down and waiting with yawning thirst to drink in and rot that wall. Nothing would surprise me less than a discovery such as that by a patient, inquisitive person who doesn’t even own a hammer.

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237.

FRIDAY, JUNE 12

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Kevin Ambrogi, musician, on “Music in the Lives of Famous People: From Nero to Einstein” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $15, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 527-2173.

“Health, Human Rights and the War on Gaza: Evidence from the Frontlines” A discussion with Dr. Mads Gilbert Norwegian Aid Committee, University Hospital Norway at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker. 1640 Addison St.

“Soulful” A Benefit for ArtsChange, a community-based arts program for at-risk youth in Richmond, with music and tapas at 7 p.m. at Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Allston Way. Tickets are $25. 275-4787. www.artschange.org

Womansong Circle An evening of participatory singing for women at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Small Assembly Room, 2345 Channing Way, at Dana. Suggested donation $15-20. betsy@betsyrosemusic.org

Berkeley High School Class of 1959 50th Reunion at 5:30 p.m. at Doubletree Hotel. Cost is $75. RSVP by June 8. 415-897-1320. brklyv@aol.com

East Bay Open Studios Sat. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. For details see www.proartsgallery.org

Chickens in the Home Garden A class covering the basics of starting and tending a backyard flock, from 10 a.m. to noon. Contact kyle@chezpanissefoundation.org

Walking Tour of Old Oakland Uptown to the Lake to discover Art Deco landmarks. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Paramount Theater at 2025 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234.

Peralta Hacienda Historical Park Memory House A multi-media exploration of the cultures of the East Bay. Open from 2 to 4 p.m. at the 1870 Antonia Peralta House, 2465 24th Ave., Oakland. Cost is $1. 532-9142. www.peraltahacienda.org

“The Elusive Peace in Israel/ Palestine: What is Going On? Where Do We Go from Here?” with Dr. Hasan Fouda at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. 841-4824.

Master Gardeners at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market Get advice on watering, plant selection and pest management from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Center St., between MLK and Milvia. 639-1275. http://amcg.ucdavis.edu

The East Bay Chapter of The Great War Society meets to discuss The Battle of the Coronel Sea & Falkland Islands with Martin Weisberger at 10:30 a.m. at the Albany Veterans Bldg. 1325 Portland Ave. Albany. 526-4423.

Happiest Place on Earth at Playland Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $10-$15.

Mercedes Diesel Maintenance Lecture and workshop with Billy Jacobs, Biodiesel collective member from noon to 6 p.m. at 4th St. at Dwight Way. Cost is $30 for lecture, $140 for lecture and workshop. 653-9450. dieselworkshops@gmail.com

Lawn Bowling on the green at the corner of Acton St. and Bancroft Way every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. for ages 12 and up. Wear flat soled shoes, no heels. Free lessons. 841-2174.

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552.

Open Shop at Berkeley Boathouse from 1 to 5 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Take part in constructing a wooden boat or help out with other maritime projects. No experience necessary. First time is free, cost is $10 per day. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org

Greywater Primer Learn about options for disengaging from the water grid including rainwater, graywater reuse and composting toilets. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Location given upon registration. Sponsored by Institute of Urban Homesteading. Cost is $30-$50. 927-3252.

“Practicing Theology in the Aftermath of Trauma: How Religious Communities Can Participate in Trauma Healing” with Boston University School of Theology Prof. Shelly Rambo at 11:30 a.m. at Epworth UMC, 1953 Hopkins St. RSVP to 353-8972. mkeelan@bu.edu.

Summer Reading Games Begin at the Richmond Public Library for children under age 13. Teenagers can join the Young Adult Reading Game. Register at any of the four Richmond libraries. For more inormation call 620-6566.

Community Yoga Class Mon. and Thurs. at 10 a.m. at James Kenney Parks and Rec. Center at Virginia and 8th. Seniors and beginners welcome. Cost is $6. 207-4501.

Three Beats for Nothing South Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Mon. at 3 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Ellis at Ashby. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal

East Bay Track Club for girls and boys ages 3-15 meets Mon. and Wed. at 6 p.m. at Berkeley High School track field. Free. 776-7451.

Morning Meditation Every Mon., Wed., and Fri. at 7:45 a.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. 486-8700.

Small-Business Counseling Free one-hour one-on-one counseling to help you start and run your small business with a volunteer from Service Core of Retired Executives, Mon. evenings by appointment at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. For appointment call 981-6148. www.eastbayscore.org

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992.

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830.

Bridge for beginners from 12:30 to 2:15 p.m., all others 12:30 to 4 p.m. Sing-A-Long at 2:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17

The Friends of the Berkeley Public Library Annual Luncheon at noon at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. The speaker will be Trish Hawthorne on “North Branch: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” Friends are invited to bring a friend. Bring a bag lunch; beverages and dessert provided. RSVP to 981-6152.

Rising Kneads: A Sourdough Primer Learn how to make your own starter culture using different grains and how to make a variety of breads from scratch, from 7 to 10 p.m. on the East Bay. Location given upon registration. Cost is $30-$50. Sponsored by Institute of Urban Homesteading. 927-3252.

Conscientious Projector Film Series “Garbage Warrior” about homes built from garbage off-the-grid, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donation $5-10 appreciated. No one turned away for lack of funds. 841-4824.

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. in the LeConte School cafeteria, 2241 Russell St. on the 24 hour convenience store at Telegraph & Ashby and better use and protection of city and BUSD open space. KarlReeh@aol.com

Summer Dance Party EveryThurs. at 7:30 p.m. at Live Oak Park. Teachers will lead a variety of dances from around the world. All ages at 7:30, teens and adults at 8:30. Cost is $2 children, $5 adults.

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237.

FRIDAY, JUNE 19

Tribute to the Courage of the Homeless and Celebration of boona’s 30 years at BOSS, with an Indian Tamasha and dinner, music and more at 6 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $40, $75 for two. 649-1930. sonja@self-sufficiency.org

World Refugee Day: East Bay Refugee Forum from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at San Antonio Park, 16th Ave & Foothill Blvd, Oakland. Sponsored by Survivors International, a non-profit dedicated to providing mental health and social services to survivors of torture. www.survivorsintl.org

Memories of Berkeley Public School Desegregation Application deadline for people interested in sharing their experiences. For information call 981-6142. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org

Shimmy Shimmy Kid’s Dance with clowns, dance music and more for the whole family at 6 p.m. at Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding Ave., Alameda. Cost is $5-$10. www.rhythmix.org

Berkeley School Volunteers New volunteer orientation from 10 to 11 a.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Volunteer opportunities in the summer or during the regular school year. 644-8833. bsv@berkeley.k12.ca.us

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Debra Saunders, columnist, SF Chrionicle on “Read Your newspaper!” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $15, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 527-2173. www.citycommonsclub.org

Demonstrate for Peace! Bring your signs and determination from 2 to 4 p.m. at Acton and University aves. Sponsored by Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers, and Strawberry Creek Lodge Tenants Association.

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310.

Three Beats for Nothing Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Fri. at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, Hearst at MLK. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal

Summer Solstice Music Festival, with over 50 diverse groups of performers from 1 to 7 p.m. along MacArthur Blvd in the Laurel District of Oakland. www.laurelsummersolsticemusicfestival.org

Summer Solstice Gathering with a mini-workshop on Astronomy and the Seasons, led by Tory Brady, at 7:45 p.m. at the Interim Solar Calendar, César Chávez Park, Berkeley Marina. Dress warmly. www.solarcalendar.org

SalmonAid Festival with music by Albino, Mitch Woods, Zydeco Flames and others, food, and information about sustainable seafood, Sat. and Sun. from noon to 8 p.m. at Jack London Square, Oakland. www.salmonaid.org

Walking Tour of Old Oakland “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. at the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours

Return of the Terns Celebrate the return of the endangered California Least Terns, nesting at the Alameda Wildlife Refuge after their 2,000-mile migration from Latin America. Reserve a one-hour viewing trip to the Alameda Wildlife Refuge with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist. Registration required; please visit www.ebparks.org.

Economic Empowerment Fair Increase your awareness of the financial and social services resources and information in the Berkeley community with workshops, vendors, free credit reports, follow up counseling, and youth activities, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at St. Paul AME Church, 2024 Ashby Ave. Free. 848-2050.

World Refugee Day: Art & Awareness from 2 to 6 p.m. at College Avenue Presbyterian Church, 5951 College Ave., Oakland. Sponsored by Survivors International, a non-profit dedicated to providing mental health and social services to survivors of torture. www.survivorsintl.org

Family Pride Day at Habitot Children’s Museum with activities from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $7-$8. For details see www.habitot.org

Father’s Day Weekend at Playland Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $10-$15. Dads get in for free when accompanied by one of their children. 232-4264 ext. 25. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org

Master Gardeners at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market Get advice on watering, plant selection and pest management from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Center St., between MLK and Milvia. 639-1275. http://amcg.ucdavis.edu

Lawn Bowling on the green at the corner of Acton St. and Bancroft Way every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. for ages 12 and up. Wear flat soled shoes, no heels. Free lessons. 841-2174.

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552.

Open Shop at Berkeley Boathouse from 1 to 5 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Take part in constructing a wooden boat or help out with other maritime projects. No experience necessary. First time is free, cost is $10 per day. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org

Berkeley Path Wanderers: Daley’s Scenic Park and Beyond A moderately paced excursion through the original stomping grounds of the Hillside Club. While this first ever weekend evening walk will not have a formal program, we’ll stop and enjoy the architectural and panoramic treasures on our way up to La Verada Rd and back. Some steep climbs will be included. Meet at 6 p.m. at Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 528-3246. www.berkeleypaths.org

Bike Tour of Oakland for ages 12 and up with bikes, helmets and repair kits. Meet at 10th St. entrance of Oakland Museum of California. free, but reservations required. 238-3514. www.museumca.org

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club, Berkeley Marina. Wear warm, waterproof clothing and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. Children 5 and over welcome with parent or guardian. www.cal-sailing.org

Kids Are Us Fun Day with poetry, art and music jam session, from 1 to 5 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. 644-4930. www.expressionsgallery.org

Father’s Day at the Oakland Aviation Museum from noon to 4 p.m. with open cockpits and car show, at 8252 Earhart Rd., Bldg. 621, Historic North Field, Oakland Airport. 638-7100. www.aoklandaviationmuseum.org

Social Action Forum on volunteering in the local community at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306.

East Bay Atheists with a video of Andy Thomson’s talk “Why We Believe in Gods” at 1:30 p.m. at Berkeley Main Library, 3rd Floor Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 222-7580. www.eastbayatheists.org/meetings.html

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org

Tibetan Buddhism with Rosalyn White on “Saving a Culture, Book by Book” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000. www.nyingmainstitute.com

Sew Your Own Open Studio Come learn to use our industrial and domestic machines, or work on your own projects, from 2 to 6 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Also on Thurs. from 2 to 6 p.m. Cost is $5 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org

CITY MEETINGS

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., June 11, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., June 11, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7430.

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., June 15, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900.